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COPYRIGHT DEPOSIT. 



THE PHYSICAL BASIS 



OF 



MIND AND MORALS 



BY 

M. H. FITCH 



CHICAGO 

CHARLES H. KERR & COMPANY 

1906 



*v> 



\ 



LIBRARY of CONGRESS 


Two Copies Received 


OCT 20 '906 


CoDyrigfht Entry 
$W //. / f o G 
CLASS <X XXc, No, 


/S77 *+y 

COPY B. ' 



COPYRIGHT 1906, BY M. H. FITCH. 



CONTENTS 



Chapter Page 

I. A Short Outline of The Principle of Evolution.. 12 

II. Charles R. Darwin — The Exponent of Evolution. 45 

III. Herbert Spencer and his Mistaken Disciples 70 

IV. The Rhythm of Motion 91 

V. Human Knowledge and its limitations 110 

VI. The Phenomenal Ego 144 

VII. The Essence of Phenomenism 167 

VIII. A Natural Code of Ethics 186 

IX. Limitations and Impediments 215 

X. Summary 238 



THE PHYSICAL BASIS OF 
MIND AND MORALS 



INTRODUCTORY 

There is nothing at rest. This is evident to the most 
casual observer. It is at the same time very significant. 
It is the basic principle of evolution. The immense bod- 
ies of granite, which seem to be the solid foundation on 
which, not only the mountains are laid, but the very 
earth itself is built, have all the molar motions of the 
earth and also the slow change of molecular motion im- 
plied in the principle of evolution. 

As the latent heat of the earth is slowly radiating into 
space all the constituent elements, the rocks, soil, water, 
and atmosphere, are correspondingly changing. The 
"fixed stars" are not permanent in one place for a mo- 
ment, although the human eye can perceive no change in 
their relative positions during the lifetime of man. And 
yet nothing is changed either in quality or quantity. It 
is only a change of form. -All past combinations of mat- 
ter and motion have given way to the present status and 
this is fast changing to forms better adapted to new cor- 
relations. Form is evanescent, substance is immortal. 
These changing forms contitute function or phenomena. 
These are the only objective things, which being repre- 

5 



6 PHYSICAL BASIS OF MIND AND MORALS 

sented to our senses produce in us what is termed con- 
sciousness. Phenomenism is really the relation all things 
hold to each other. 

I have tried to show in the following pages that the 
real meaning of these facts cannot be comprehended by 
the human brain, and that wisdom teaches us to waste 
no time in conjecture about the ultimate reality. Our 
senses, however, do perceive these phenomena or appear- 
ances and upon these alone we must rely for knowledge. 
Upon such knowledge alone can we base our lines of 
reason, memory, and will. The rules of our personal and 
social lives must be derived from such knowledge as our 
brains can acquire from these phenomena. The psychol- 
ogy of our lives consists of the correspondence between 
ourselves and the relation these phenomena bear to each 
other in the environment. In other words we know 
only the relativity of things. Our consciousness is the 
aggregate of the images these objective relationships 
make upon our very complex nerve structure, and the 
brain centers of reason, memory, imagination and will 
are stations in the neural arc co-ordinating these images 
into ideas. 

The avenues of this correspondence are the special 
organs of sense, and the presentations thus made become 
transformed by the very complex structure of the brain, 
by the molecular motion of its atoms, into all the various 
forms of cognition, heretofore miscalled faculties. It 
seems impossible to study the psychological phenomena 
without assuming a subjective and an objective aspect. 
But both are one phenomenon in their co-relation to all 
other forms of matter and motion. It seems plain that 
the impression made by the transformed image upon the 
sense organ, e. g. the eye, is a natural mechanical opera- 
tion, similar to the image in a mirror. But the instant- 



INTRODUCTORY 7 

aneous reproduction of the same image on the cortex of 
the brain centers and the simultaneous production there 
of similar and contiguous images of memory, the fusion 
of these like images into a condition called perception or 
feeling, is a process so obscure as to appear to the un- 
scientific the act of a supernatural power. 

How the feeling comes and how the ideas are formed 
and recalled are as much unsolved problems now, as they 
were in the days of Descartes and Kant, except upon 
the hypothesis that the images are the feelings, and the 
ideas in due order are the fusions of like images. The 
process is wholly natural and physiological. However 
mysterious the appearance of the psychic effect may be 
the fact remains that apparently only those organisms 
with a certain development of central nervous material 
centers, are capable of ideationally initiated motor sen- 
sations ; yet Wm. Wundt contends, in Vol. I, "Physiologi- 
cal-Psychology," that we cannot interpret the psychical 
processes themselves as molecular processes. But the 
other fact also remains that cessation of the phenomena 
of movement we call life inhibits all psychical phe- 
nomena. 

It may be therefore that the energy, or force mani- 
festing in vital movements, is the causative of both the 
physiological and psychological phenomena in the living 
organism, and that they are two aspects of the same 
force working through differentiated plexuses of nerv- 
ous structure. This seems to be the view of Herbert 
Spencer. But he is called a materialist. If I understand 
Ribot, this is his view, and perhaps to a less extent An- 
gell. But they are all silent as to the real process that 
occurs after the sensation reaches the cerebrum and is 
apparently there transformed into the psychical element 
of consciousness. 



8 HYSICAI, BASIS OF MIND AND MORALS 

The actual connection, the nature of the method of 
the differentiation of the thing perceived and the per- 
ceiver seems to be the unknown process; all other pro- 
cess is objective to scientific investigation. This view 
of the method of thought is metaphysical, not either psy- 
chological or physiological. If this is so, one opinion 
concerning its nature is as good as another. It is of the 
standing in knowledge that Spencer's "Unknowable Ab- 
solute" is. It belongs to the catagory of agnosticism. 

Having said this much, it seems superfluous at pres- 
ent to say more. Yet I assume, in the pages following, 
that this connecting link between the sensation and the 
perceiver of it, being unconscious to ourselves and un- 
observable in the organisms of others, is simply a con- 
tinuation of the same physiological process that we ob- 
serve up to that point, and from that point to the physi- 
cal effect in external muscular movement. 

The following chapters endeavor to place limitations 
upon the imagination and to bring within the operation 
of reason the phenomena of the primal emotions — fear, 
affection, and anger. When one discovers that his or- 
ganism is only a part of cosmic phenomena and is en- 
tirely dependent on these for its existence, he will then 
turn his thoughts in full upon the great importance to 
his welfare, that he acquire correct ideas of such relation- 
ship. If he is to acquire such ideas as his brain is cap- 
able of producing, he will then have no time left for 
thinking of unknowable causes behind the phenomena, 
by which alone he cannot arrive at any idea. In this 
sense these chapters are strictly utilitarian. 

One of the most interesting features of the. study of 
a subject like psychology is the discovery of the intellect- 
ual tendencies of different authors. Herbert Spencer, 
Th. Ribot, Romanes, Angell, Wundt and Hseckel, use 



INTRODUCTORY 9 

different terms frequently to express the same meaning. 
Haeckel, Romanes, and Angell are simple, direct and 
easily understood. Ribot and Wundt are very learned 
and extremely scientific. Wundt goes into the most 
elaborate diagramatic explanations of the anatomy and 
physiology as well as the psychology of the organism, 
resolving all three elements into still other elements and 
working out what he calls a schema, and finally establish- 
ing an hypothesis that neither the anatomy nor the phys- 
iology will account for the psychology, although he ad- 
mits that without both there would be no psychology. 
As anatomy treats of material substance and physiology 
of function, a form of motion, the two being the ele- 
ments of every organism, if psychical phenomena re- 
quire still another unknown element to account for them, 
Wundt may in future volumes not yet published in Eng- 
lish and unread by me, be able to find something more 
in them than matter and motion. Spencer discovers 
nothing more and does not hesitate to say that matter 
and motion, or structure and function, are sufficient to 
account for all phenomena, including what is called 
mentality in man. 

Wundt says that the association centers of the brain 
are connected by innumerable conduction paths. That 
it is probable that every idea, while initiated by the 
sensory paths, yet is contributed to by numerous other 
associative centers through which run the nerve fibre 
conducting the particular sensation. Not only the ana- 
tomical centers contribute, but the contents of the idea 
is more or less determined by the direction of the sensa- 
tion. Now, if the character of the idea, or the contents 
of it are thus determined by the particular center cells 
acting upon the sensation, and also by the direction 
taken in its passage to its appropriate center where the 



10 PHYSICAL BASIS OF MIND AND MORALS 

idea is finally formed there must be some process, chem- 
ical or mechanical, which occurs to the grey matter of 
these various paths of conduction that when completed 
is the sensation, feeling, or idea. The co-incidence of 
objective energy, forms new combinations in the mole- 
cules of nerve tissue, these new combinations being the 
psychical effects, the whole being a natural phenomenon. 
Or we must assume an unknown supernatural power 
using this complicated and ever changing neural machine 
as a process or method of working out the raw material 
of sensations into the ideas. The anatomy and physi- 
ology are plainly visible to the eye of science. The re- 
sulting psychology — or psychic phenomena — are plainly 
perceptible. The question then is "Are the psychic phe- 
nomena, which always accompany the plainly percept- 
ible functions of the neural structure, the natural effects 
of those functions, or are they really produced by some 
other power, i. e. spiritual, working through the struc- 
tures and functions? Ribot and Spencer say the .func- 
tion is the idea. Wundt says he cannot find the nexus, 
but that the idea of an independent force or power caus- 
ing the psychical upon a physical substrate is not in- 
compatible with the facts. He does not contend that it 
is other than natural and in no sense spiritual. 

The different chapters treat of the different aspects 
of the same phenomenon. Evolution is a continual change 
of form, which is the same as saying a serial differentia- 
tion of the relational element in monism. Darwin and 
Herbert Spencer being the most prominent exponents 
of the principle of evolution, the chapters devoted to 
them naturally follow that on Evolution. Rhythm of 
Motion is a condition and a universal accompaniment 
of all phenomena. The chapters on Human Knowledge, 
the Phenomenal Ego, the Essence of Phenomenism, a 



INTRODUCTORY H 

Natural Code of Ethics, and Limitations and Impedi- 
ments are all treatments of the different aspects of the 
relation the Ego or self holds to other things. This re- 
lation is the determining factor in any natural code of 
ethics and is the basis of any rational philosophy or reli- 
gion. It is theoretically the basis of supernatural reli- 
gion. But before there can be any relation between 
things there must be objective realism in the things re- 
lated. To the self this must be sensory realism, not 
imaginary nor superstitious. 

The author does not claim to have discovered any 
new scientific facts. But as no two brains can express 
the same facts in exactly the same way, and seldom draw 
the same conclusion from them, he hopes that his ex- 
pression of the well known truths of natural phenomena 
may be new to some readers. He has made use of as 
simple language to express the ideas as seemed to him 
compatible with accurate thought. 

He hopes the readers will not conclude that they 
were written with any idea of pointing a way to avoid 
the responsibilities of life, nor to blast the hopes and 
aspirations now entertained by the most of Christendom. 
They are intended rather to meet the responsibilities in 
what the author thinks is the only way they can be met 
successfully. The successful meeting and solving of 
life's problems alone can bring happiness to the indivi- 
dual, and a more desirable civilization to the world. 



CHAPTER I 

A SHORT OUTLINE OF THE PRINCIPLE OF EVOLUTION 

There are two theories of the method by which the 
perpetual apparition of natural phenomena throughout 
what is called the visible universe has been produced. 
One is the theory of special creation; that is, that a 
Supreme Being, called God, created out of nothing all 
that is. This does not pretend to give the real origin 
of matter and motion. Because saying that they came 
out of nothing is not accounting for them. It is the 
same as saying that the subject is beyond our mental 
capacity. 

The other theory is called evolution. This theory 
assumes the existence of matter and force, but does not 
pretend to account for their origin, and that from these 
two always acting together have evolved the perpetual 
apparition. "Evolution is a change of form, through 
the production of new configurations." * The most 
comprehensive definition, however, one that covers both 
organic and inorganic evolution, is that given by Her- 
bert Spencer in his "First Principles." "Evolution is the 
integration of matter and the concomitant dissipation of 
motion, during which the matter passes from an inde- 
finite, incoherent homogeneity to a definite, coherent he- 
terogeneity; and during which the retained motion un- 
dergoes a parallel transformation." 

It will be seen that this definition describes, in tech- 
nical language, the transformation of a nebula into the 

* Dr. Paul Cams. 

12 



A SHORT OUTUNE OF EVOLUTION 13 

solid bodies of the solar system, as well as the integra- 
tion of a condensed form of matter, prohably by chem- 
ical combination, into forms of life. The integration 
of matter composing the nebula into globes, and the con- 
comitant dissipation of motion in form of heat and 
energy — the same as is now going on in the sun — is a 
theory accepted by all physicists so far as I know. The 
nebular theory of Kant, Laplace, and William Herschel, 
in accounting for inorganic evolution, presupposes the 
homegeneity and gaseous condition of all matter; and 
from that nebular condition the present heterogeneous 
stellar universe has been evolved. The greatest ad- 
vances in astronomy made in late years have been the 
disclosures by photography of nebulosity existing 
throughout space. More than 120,000 nebulae are now 
known; and by observing these, astronomers are study- 
ing the phases through which our earth and solar system 
seem to have passed. 

The theory presupposes that the nebula from which 
the sun and the planets, for example, have integrated, 
filled the space within the orbit of Neptune with homo- 
geneous matter in a gaseous state. Or it is likely the 
nebula extended a sufficient distance beyond that orbit 
to leave Neptune in the relative position it now occupies 
in the solar system after the subsequent concentration of 
his arm of the original nebula. Granted the existence of 
this nebula and the force of gravitation, and it can be 
proved that condensation would begin. In the process 
of condensation * a rapid circular or spiral motion 
would be set up; and by the force thus generated the 
different planets would eventually be formed upon self 
appointed centers in succession ; each planet representing 



* "Condensation," in J. C. Vogt's "Principle of Matter. 



14 PHYSICAL BASIS OF MIND AND MORALS 

a minor center of condensation, and being at first a mass 
of incandescent gas. The momentum of each planet 
given it while remaining a part of the nebula would keep 
it moving. ' The velocity would increase as the planet 
solidified; and the pull of the central mass would con- 
vert this forward motion into motion in an elliptical 
track; the law of moment of momentum would perpetu- 
ate the character of the motion begun in the nebula, re- 
sulting in the course of untold ages in the separate 
planets as we now behold them, moving in perfect har- 
mony in their co-ordinated orbits around a central sun. 
The sun is a more condensed portion of the original 
nebula, still shrinking, and its heat is produced by the 
friction of condensation. It is said there is still exist- 
ing the original amout of energy in the solar system, and 
that whatever occurs none of it is lost and none gained 
in the aggregate. This is the conservation of energy. 
Yet, energy seems to be lost when it takes the form of 
heat and is radiated into space. In other words the 
condensation of the matter of the nebula into solid bo- 
dies was the overcoming of certain resistances and thus 
a part of the energy was lost. Is it lost or has it taken 
some form not apparent to our senses? But the mo- 
ment of momentum remains always the same and this is 
the product of mass multiplied by the velocity, and that 
product again multiplied by a perpendicular drawn from 
the center (such as the sun) to the line of direction of 
the moving body. The moment of momentum of a 
system like the solar is the aggregate of that of all the 
bodies composing it. This is the same as saying there 
is no beginning and no end to the phenomena. It is 
saying, again, that there is no special creation of energy, 
the same as no special creation of anything. 

Energy is the aggregate work represented in phe- 



A SHORT OUTLINE OF EVOLUTION 15 

nomena. The multiplicity of effects in the process of 
evolution as well as the process itself are phenomena. 
The energy of the solar system is represented in the quan- 
tity of work which could be done if all its bodies came 
together. The energy of each of its bodies can be ascer- 
tained by multiplying one-half of its mass into the square 
of its velocity. I conceive that the persistence of force, 
which is the most important law of physics, and is per- 
ceptible to our senses in attraction of gravitation, molar 
and molecular motion, chemical attraction, in short in 
the sensory perception the eye has of environment, is the 
manifestation of energy — it is the same power that the- 
ology has personified and given intelligent control of 
phenomena. Or perhaps it would be more accurate to 
say that the first conception by man of an omnipotent 
power was not that of natural energy, or the persistence 
of force, but of a personality above or beyond and pro- 
ducing phenomena. 

It must be understood also that a separate system, 
like the solar, or any nebula, is constantly losing energy 
in the form of heat by condensation. As it loses energy 
its motion decreases, and as its motions change so does 
the relative position of its bodies, at the same time the 
relativity of its atoms changes, but there is no evidence 
that they will ever come to absolute rest even when all 
its matter comes together in one body. The movement 
of the atoms in the process of condensation is called ar- 
rested motion. (See "Rhythm of Motion" in chapter IV). 
The term "separate system" used must be taken to mean 
separate in form only. There is no "system" in reality 
separate from the general monistic system, constituting 
what we call Nature. 

Chemists have known for many years that all the 
matter of our earth can be reduced to about eighty ele- 



16 PHYSICAL BASIS OF MIND AND MORALS 

ments. There are many facts which indicate that these 
are merely varying forms of one primeval element, yet 
undiscovered. "The elements that form one per cent or 
more of the earth's crust are only eight in number. They 
are given in the following table : 

Per cent. 

Oxygen 47.02 

Silicon 28.06 

Aluminum 8.16 

Iron 4.64 

Calcium 3.50 

Magnesium 2.62 

Sodium 2.63 

Potassium 2.32 

Total 98.95 

The elements forming less than one per cent but 
more than one-tenth of one per cent of the earth's crust, 
are titanium, hydrogen and carbon. It will be seen from 
these figures that neither the common compounds nor 
the common elements are bewildering in number. Ex- 
amples af the chief rock-forming minerals can be found 
in nearly every locality. * 

The materials of the sun, planets, stars and nebulae 
are essentially the same as those of the earth. The 
spectroscope has revealed this fact. The elements of 
which the earth is composed, when heated to incan- 
descence, produce in the spectrum the same lines that 
the light of the sun and the stars and the nebulae pro- 
duce. "Is not this a weighty piece of evidence in favor 

* Carl H. Paddock of Colorado in an article entitled, "An 
Introduction to Geology," in the Mining Record of September 
23, 1905. 



A SHORT OUTLINE) OF EVOLUTION 17 

of the theory that earth, sun and planets are all portions 
of the same primeval nebula in which these elements 
are blended?"* Neither Laplace nor Kant knew of 
this evidence, yet they gave the theory the support of 
their names upon the evidence of other facts; Laplace 
deducing it from the theory of probabilities. One fact 
in nature strikes one very forcibly as at least a strong 
inference in favor of the nebular theory. Heat in suf- 
ficiently high temperature resolves all solids into gases. 
In the sun's photosphere the spectroscope shows that 
many metals and simple elements that are in a solid form 
on the earth are components of the gases of the sun. It 
is not only known that the gases of the sun are gradu- 
ally condensing as heat is radiated, but that when, under 
the blow pipe in the laboratory, a solid is converted into 
gas, that the reverse process occurs when the heat is 
withdrawn, viz., the gas naturally condenses into the 
former solid condition. Even the atmosphere can be 
condensed into a solid. All heat has its origin in the 
sun and is produced by the condensation of its units ra- 
diating heat by friction. The inference is that all matter 
has been condensed from a nebulous condition in this 
way. 

The other evidences of inorganic evolution are the 
remarkable concordance of the planes of the orbits and 
the motions of the planets therein around the sun, and 
the still further concordance of the orbits and motions 
of the satellites of the planets with the orbits of the 
planets. The greatest inclination that any of the planes 
of the orbits of the planets have to the plane of the 
ecliptic is 7 degrees, that of Mercury. All the bodies 
move in the same direction, and this direction is that in 



*Ball, "Earth's Beginnings." P. 290. 



18 PHYSICAL BASIS OF MIND AND MORALS 

which the law of mechanical motion in a nebula proves 
they would move on the nebular theory. The satellites of 
Uranus and Neptune alone revolve in a direction oppo- 
site to that of the others, but the motions of those plan- 
ets themselves correspond with the theory. There is a 
sufficient explanation of this anomaly; and the conclu- 
sion of astronomers is that these satellites will revolve 
later on in the true direction. 

The satellites of Uranus revolve around the planet in 
one plane inclined 83 degrees to that of the ecliptic, and 
in an opposite direction from the motion of the planet 
in its orbit. The law of dynamics implies that this means 
an excess of energy — the inner satellites making a rev- 
olution in one and a half days — which in the course of 
ages will be regulated by gradually lessening this angle 
of plane and decreasing the velocity. At first the angle 
will rise to 90 degrees, and then continue on the other 
side until it reaches 180 degrees. 

This would bring the motion in the right direction, 
not by any change in the absolute direction of movement 
of the satellite, but by lessening the energy of the move- 
ment and at the same time increasing the angle of its 
plane to more than 90 degrees. This will bring the mo- 
tion that now appears to be in the opposite direction 
into the same direction with that of the planet, or from 
retrograde to- direct motion. This is likely what will oc- 
cur to the satellites of Uranus as well as those of Nep- 
tune. The latter are now only at an angle of* 35 degrees 
to the ecliptic, but it is supposed that this plane will 
pass through movements parallel to that of the satellites 
of Uranus. 

'The movements of the satellites of Uranus and Nep- 
tune do not disprove the nebular hypothesis. Rather 
they illustrate the fact that the great evolution which 



A SHORT OUTLINE OF EVOLUTION 19 

has wrought the solar system into form has not yet fin- 
ished its work; it is still in progress. The work is very 
nearly done and when that work shall have been com- 
pleted, the satellites of Uranus and Neptune will no 
longer be dissociated from the general concord." * 

ORGANIC EVOLUTION. — In the earlier stages 
of the evolution of the earth there could have been no 
organic forms, such as we know them now. But if the 
nebular theory is the correct one there came a time in 
the condensation of our globe, after it had passed through 
a gaseous, then a fluid, and then assumed a comparatively 
solid form, that the surface temperature became greatly 
reduced. At some favorable juxtaposition of earth, air, 
temperature, and moisture, life must have arisen from 
inorganic substance in a manner entirely unknown to us 
except by scientific inference; at first in a very lowly 
form by a combination of elements which we find in all 
organisms — carbon, hydrogen, oxygen, and nitrogen. 
The evolution of living forms, as we now behold them, 
from the first true moner, which perhaps came into ex- 
istence in a natural way in many places at the same 
time, is what we mean by organic or biological evolu- 
tion, as distinguished from the older theory of special 
creation. It followed after inorganic evolution as a na- 
tural result of the upward or progressive change of 
matter from the homogeneous to the heterogeneous. 
Probably life began in the water. Certainly the lowest 
forms of life are marine. From these by gradual here- 
ditary variation in form and the integration of matter 
from the immediate environment, all species were de- 
veloped. 

All organisms now develop from an egg-cell. All 



'The Earth's Beginnings." P. 347. 



20 PHYSICAL BASIS OF MIND AND MORALS 

animals begin their development from a cell from i|i20 
to ijioo of an inch in diameter having the same forma- 
tion and the same composition in every instance. The 
worm that crawls on the ground and man who is the 
most complex and heterogeneous of organisms have pre- 
cisely the same beginning in an eg-cell. The unicellular 
protozoon, which never develops beyond one cell, but 
grows in bulk only, differs from the multi-cellular meta- 
zoon in its beginning not in the size or form or substance 
of the cell, but in the absence of fertilization of its 
nucleus and the consequent addition of new cells in 
building up a multicellular organism. A multicellular 
organism may grow by fission, but in doing so the birth 
of new cells is accompanied by a membrane that holds 
the cells together. The important fact is that in its be- 
ginning every animal, also every vegetable, is a cell 
analogous, if not homologous with every other. That 
fact coupled with another fact in embryology, viz., that 
all mammals, including man, in their embryological de- 
velopment, before they arrive at the mammalian form, 
pass through all the embryological forms of all the ani- 
mals below the order of mammals; viz., radiata, articul- 
ata, mollusca and vertebrata, is very strong evidence that 
they were at some period of their development existing 
in the adult form of these lower orders. This is per- 
haps the most convincing evidence of derivation from 
lower orders by variation and inheritance. 

Classification, Morphology, Embryology, Paleontol- 
ogy, and Geographical distribution all contribute in- 
numerable facts to the theory of evolution. These are all 
mentioned by Darwin in his "Origin of Species," or by 
some of his numerous disciples. It seems almost trite 
to the students of these exceedingly interesting and im- 
portant sciences to recite any of them here; but I think 



A SHORT OUTLINE OF EVOLUTION 21 

it will be instructive to give one or two facts from each 
of these five great divisions of Natural History. They 
are wonderfully interesting evidences of the principle of 
evolution. 

Linnaeus, Cuvier, and all naturalists who undertook 
to reduce the innumerable living organisms on the earth 
to an orderly system, soon discovered analogous struc- 
ture and function in all. They easily divided them into 
two kingdoms, the vegetable and the animal. Space will 
not permit citations from the vegetable kingdom. But 
the animal kingdom is made up of such innumerable 
diverse forms that, unlike vegetable forms, move from 
place to place, that it required wonderful intellectual abil- 
ity and judgment to so arrange them in like groups, hav- 
ing such abiding characteristics in common, that the mem- 
bers of each group could always be properly placed by 
means of these characteristics. At first it was thought that 
those structures whose functions were of the widest use 
to the individual should be taken as the abiding charac- 
ters for classification. But experience demonstrated that 
really the most persistent structures — and the most help- 
ful in classification — were the more obscure and the least 
useful. This is also a very strong proof of evolution, or 
derivation by variation and inheritance; because if, for 
example, all the vertebrates have backbones internally, 
and the subdivisions of that order include such wonder- 
ful differences of form and structure otherwise, as fish, 
reptiles, birds and mammals, then all these differences 
must be variations of and derivations from a common 
ancestor, having only one form and a backbone. Man's 
vertebral and mammalian structure does not dissociate 
him from the order of vertebrate mammals.. He there- 
fore must be classified as a family of the order of mam- 



22 PHYSICAL BASIS OF MIND AND MORALS 

malia. He was therefore not created at the head of the 
animal kingdom. 

Classification of plants and animals are made in 
groups subordinate to groups. This can be done only 
because of structural resemblances and structural differ- 
ences. For example, a porpoise lives in the water and 
has the form and habits of a fish. Under the biblical 
classification it would be called a fish. Yet it gives suck 
to its offspring and is therefore a mammal. It is rare 
to find a mammal an inhabitant of water. The order as 
a whole is terrestrial. Yet it is clear that the whale and 
the porpoise, on the theory of descent from a preceding 
form common to all mammalia, by so decided a change 
of habits from land to water, changed only such struc- 
ture as was necessary to adapt them to marine habits. 
But the structure necessary to suckle the young per- 
sisted in the new habitat. It is this persistent but less 
apparent structure that classifies them and not the more 
apparent structure of legs and feet changed to paddles, 
and the terrestrial general form changed to the shape 
of fish. 

The advances made in the method of classification 
from time to time, from the purely artificial plan of Mo- 
ses down to the more natural system of Cuvier, while 
not so intended by the classifiers, yet at every step showed 
more clearly the close genetic relation of all plants and 
animals. Had these naturalists entertained the theory of 
descent by modification, as taught subsequently by the 
theory of evolution, they could only in a few instances 
have made their classification more complete evidences 
of that theory. All classification not only shows close af- 
finity, accompanied by modifications, but a gradual ad- 
vance from the earliest fossil forms, in heterogeneous- 
ness — a constant multiplication of effects and a develop- 



A SHORT OUTLINE: OF EVOLUTION 23 

ment from the simple to the complex. These are the 
cardinal principles of the theory of evolution. 

As to morphology all animals are remarkably alike 
in form and growth. A tiny round cell in the embryo 
is common to all at first. From that period to the adult 
form there are innumerable points of homology and more 
of analogy. The embryological form common to all ani- 
mals is the first to be developed in any vertebrate; this 
is the formation of a round ball of cells held together 
by a membrance. Then follow in regular order the 
structures common to the radiata, articulata, mollusca, 
and then the vertebrata; and lastly, appear the charac- 
teristics marking the species to which the embryo be- 
longs. And on the upward march, each species carries 
with it in vestigial form many structural organs, useful 
in the lower forms, but useless, or even harmful in the 
higher. In the human body we have hair covering the 
foetus and shed prior to birth; the thymus gland; the 
muscles moving the scalp, the ears and other parts of 
the skin; the peculiar fold in the tip of the ear; the hair 
on the arms; the valves in the horizontal and not in the 
perpendicular veins; the pineal gland in the brain; the 
semi-lunar fold in the eye; the coccyx, or trace of tail 
at the end of the vertebral column; the milk teeth. All 
these are what are called rudimentary organs. None of 
them — save possibly the pineal gland — plays any ap- 
preciable part in the human economy. Some of them, 
as the hair on the arms and the valves in the (now) hori- 
zontal veins, would have been useful to an animal walk- 
ing on all fours. Others, as the vermiform appendix 
would be useful to an animal whose diet was chiefly 
fruit. On the theory of special creation how shall these 
rudimentary organs be accounted for? Being of no use 
to the organism why should they have been created in 



24 PHYSICAL BASIS OF MIND AND MORALS 

it? But on the theory of evolution, by variation and 
heredity, they are understandable. 

"Comparative anatomy proves to the satisfaction of 
every unprejudiced and critical student the significant 
fact that the body of man and that of the anthropoid ape 
are not only peculiarly similar, uut they are practically 
one and the same in every important respect. The same 
two hundred bones, in the same order and structure, make 
up our inner skeleton; the same three hundred muscles 
•effect our movements; the same hair clothes our skin; 
the same groups of ganglionic cells build up the marv- 
elous structure of our brain ; the same four chambered 
heart is the central pulsomer of our circulation ; the same 
thirty-two teeth are set in the same order in our jaws; 
the same salivary, hepatic and gastric glands compass 
our digestion; the same reproductive organs insure the 
maintenance of our race." * 

It is a well known fact that in the decline of vitality 
accompanying old age, the functions last developed are 
the earliest lost. The term "second childhood" is the 
popular recognition of a profound psychological truth. 
The highest intellectual functions soonest fade while the 
instincts and emotions, which existed almost at birth, 
remain to the latest breath. These phenomena which 
accompany normal senile decay in man are strikingly 
similar to those which the vivisectionist is able to pro- 
duce with his knife. 

Remove the cerebral hemisphere of a pigeon and it 
returns to a condition closely resembling that of the 
newly hatched bird — it will swallow food placed in its 
mouth, and if you turn it on its back it will regain its 
normal position. But it cannot pick up food for itself, 



'Riddle of the Universe." P. 37. 



A SHORT OUTLINE OF EVOLUTION 25 

it cannot avoid danger — indeed it does not recognize 
danger — it cannot fly. These powers depended on the 
co-ordinate action of its higher brain cells, and the re- 
moval of these cells reduces its activities to the condition 
of the pigeon far below the normal. 

No one has been able to carry on' similar experiments 
with the higher mammals, because of the resulting shock, 
and the uncontrollable hemmorrhage; and of course ex- 
periments on human beings are out of the question. But 
there is good reason to believe that if these normal and 
technical difficulties could be eliminated, the trained 
physiologist could carry a man back by the successive 
steps of his evolution from lower orders, first, in the 
scale of civilization, and then in that of organic life, by 
simply destroying in succession the physical centers of 
the brain from the highest to the lowest. There are 
many cases in medical literature of insanity resulting 
from injury to the brain, and disappearing when the in- 
jury was cured. In some of these cases the injured 
person while retaining nearly complete control of his 
mental faculties lost all sense of moral accountability 
and committed grave offences. Certain diseases, espe- 
cially paretic dementia, produce the same affect, and 
these diseases have for their constant lesions the destruc- 
tion of the brain tissue. 

The phenomena of anaesthesia furnish similar evi- 
dence. Physically the person going under chloroform or 
ether loses first conscious sensibility, then unconscious 
sensibility in the voluntary muscles, then the peristaltic 
action of the involuntary muscles of the coats of the 
intestines stops, and finally, if the anaesthetic is pushed, 
the heart ceases to beat. Mentally the same order is 
followed — the reverse order of development. The pa- 
tient loses first his judgment and self control, his ethical 



26 PHYSICAL BASIS OF MIND AND MORALS 

instinctive and carefully taught manners disappear and 
he laughs, cries, or swears in utter abandon long before 
he has ceased to be able to repeat, parrot-wise, the mo- 
notonous counting of the anaesthetist. The qualities 
which can best be spared go first. Judged by this grimly 
practial test our mentality depends upon the physical 
development at the time and must have been an evolu- 
tion from lower forms of mentality. 

PALEONTOLOGY— Darwin says that the evidences 
from geology are few and scattered, that only a small 
portion of the earth's crust has been penetrated, and that 
fossil remains are not so satisfactory as he could wish. 
But when he was in South America during the voyage 
of the Beagle he noticed that the fossil species of that 
region were only modifications of the living species. 
Romanes on the contrary says that the geological record 
is very rich in evidence, and in his work entitled "Dar- 
win and After Darwin," gives a large number of very 
convincing proofs. Among them are the following : 
"There is a general concordance of fossilized animals, 
from the Cambrian formation to the Post-Pliocene, 
with the requirements of the evolutionary theory. There 
is an evident adaption of the animal to its habitat ; a cor- 
respondence of its structure with the nece&sary function 
of obtaining sustenance in the peculiar conditions of 
each geological period. There is a gradual progression 
from the simple to the complex; from homogeneous 
structure to specialized or heterogeneous structure." 

"The earliest ruminants were hornless. Then in the 
middle Miocene the first antelopes appeared with tiny 
horns which progressively increased in size until the 
present day. But it is in the deer tribe that we meet 
with even better evidence touching the progressive evo- 
lution of horns. For deer's horns or antlers are arbor- 



A SHORT OUTLINE OF EVOLUTION 27 

escent. Among the older members of the tribe in the 
lower Miocene there are no horns at all. In the mid- 
Miocene we meet with two pronged horns. Next, in the 
upper Miocene and extending into the Pliocene we meet 
with three pronged horns. Then in the Pliocene we find 
also four pronged horns, leading us to five pronged. 
Lastly, in the forest beds of Norfolk we meet with ar- 
borescent horns. The life history of existing stags furn- 
ishes a parallel development; beginning with a single 
horn (which has not yet been found paleontologically), 
going on to two prongs, three prongs, four prongs, and 
afterwards branching." * 

Prof. Marsh's illustration of the evolution of the 
horse and his progenitors from the Eocene epoch to the 
present time is one of the strongest proofs from Pale- 
ontology. In each epoch the feet were structurally 
adapted to the surface of the earth for locomotion, and 
the teeth to the mastication of the existing food of the 
period. But the principal point is that each successive 
form was a modified descendent of the preceding form, 
changed by the natural method of variation and hered- 
ity, not by special creation. In this case of the horse and 
his ancestors the missing links are produced by Prof. 
Marsh. On page 232, Le Conte's "Evolution," in speak- 
ing of the missing links in general, Prof. Le Conte says 
in reply to the question of where are intermediate forms ? 
"We answer, the intermediate forms are eliminated in 
the struggle for life and are not reproduced by cross 
breeding." 

I take it that this disposes of the missing link. I hold 
that it is absurd to talk of the missing link for the further 
reason that the gradations are supposed to be so grad- 



Vol. I, pp. 167-168. 



28 PHYSICAL BASIS OF MIND AXD MORALS 

ual, each modification has been so slight that it could not 
be perceived by the human senses even if it did exist. 
Each gradual change from a low type toward a higher 
animal, would be classified by naturalists as either a 
variety or a new species, and would be the missing link, 
but unrecognized as such. Were all the variations 
through which the first form has passed in its develop- 
ment into the species now existing, before the natural- 
ist for classification, the whole might be called one spe- 
cies with innumerable varieties. Agassiz examined sev- 
eral thousand shells of one species and found no two 
exactly alike. 

Paleontology can only give evidence of the evolution 
of species in time. But geographical distribution furn- 
ishes arguments from the wide spread location of spe- 
cies in space. If the theory of special creation were true, 
then there is no reason why forms either fossil or living 
adapted to a given environment should not be found in 
all localities furnishing such environment. For exam- 
ple, the rabbit when carried in ships to Australia found 
itself so well adapted to that locality that it overran the 
island until it was declared a nuisance. Other mammals 
carried to the island throve as well. Yet the only mam- 
malian life indigenous to Australia — the dingo being 
plainly an importation — is one of the oldest and least 
developed kinds, the marsupial. The duckbill is a very 
low form of vertebrates. In Australia the forms of ani- 
mal life found upon the discovery of the island consisted 
of those found also fossolized in the Cretaceous rocks. 
The inference is that in the Cretaceous period Australia 
was connected with the continent of Asia, and was then 
or soon therafter transformed into a large island. The 
absence of mammals and the persistence of marsupials 
are thus accounted for bv natural cause and effect It was 



A SHORT OUTLINE OF EVOLUTION 29 

while on the voyage of the Beagle that Darwin noticed a 
similar anomaly in the fauna of the Gallepagos Islands, 
six hundred miles off the west coast of South America. 
The fauna there consisted almost entirely of birds, with 
three species of land tortoise and five species of lizard — 
no mammals. But he noticed that the forms of these 
were very closely related to those on the mainland. The 
inference was that the islands had been colonized by 
such of the continental forms as could cross the inter- 
vening strip of the sea, the birds by flying, the lizard and 
tortoise eggs transported on drift wood or carried by 
water direct. But why, if special creation were a fact, 
was there an absence of such forms of the animal king- 
dom as could not have been brought in some way from 
the continent? These islands are as well adapted to 
mammal life as the continent is, and if all mammals were 
specially created, why not here? 

Romanes in his chapter on "Geographical Distribu- 
tion" says,* "The conclusion to which, I . submit, all 
the evidence leads, is, that if the doctrine of special cre- 
ation is taken to be true, then it must be further taken 
that the one and only principle which has been consist- 
ently followed in the geographical distribution of spe- 
cies, is that of so depositing them as to make it every- 
where appear that they were not thus deposited at all, 
but came into existence where they now occur by way of 
genetic descent with perpetual migration and correlative 
modification." 

THE METHOD. — So far I have confined my re- 
marks on evolution to the facts which seem to support 
it. But the method is equally interesting, because not 
until Darwin, did any one draw the same conclusion as 



* "Darwin and After Darwin. 



30 PHYSICAL BASIS OF MIND AND MORALS 

to the method from the same well known facts as he did, 
except Alfred R. Wallace, who published his paper on 
Natural Selection simultaneously with Darwin's "Origin 
of Species." But Darwin undoubtedly preceded him in 
the conception of the theory. For in 1844 Darwin wrote 
a foreshadowing of it, and was really at that time con- 
vinced that natural selection was the principal method. 
He arrived home from his voyage on the Beagle in 1837 
and from that time on he pursued the study of the facts 
and methods of evolution. 

Naturalists prior to Darwin had busied themselves in 
making collections of specimens and studying the facts 
of affinity and variation, without seeming to arrive at 
any theory regarding the origin of forms. They took 
for granted the statements in Genesis and classified ac- 
cordingly. Species were asserted to be immutable; each 
the result of a definite creative act, and each separated 
from every other by impassible differences. These were 
the bases of the Linnaean classification. The naturalists, 
St. Hiliare, Lamarck and Erasmus Darwin were excep- 
tions. They conceived a crude idea of evolution. 

Any classification, however, was an analysis made by 
man as a means of logical study, and was more or less 
artificial. Darwin and Wallace noticed that living ani- 
mals had a close resemblance not only to each other, but 
also to fossil animals of the same region. They experi- 
mented by breeding animals under domestication and also 
noticed that structural variations appeared frequently in 
the offspring. This led them to speculate and theorise 
until they both published at the same time the hypothesis 
of natural selection as the method by which species had 
been produced. Their speculation, however, was induc- 
tive, not metaphysical. It was confined to the realm of 



A SHORT OUTLINE OF EVOLUTION 31 

natural cause and effect and therefore scientifically 
legitimate. 

There is a metaphysics of science in the sense that 
many things, like the nature of the atom, or composition 
of matter, or of the medium called ether are speculative. 
But these are simply assumptions of the unknown prob- 
abilities of matter and motion based on known pheno- 
mena. There is a very important distinction between 
natural and supernatural metaphysics. An extreme and 
the newest form of natural metaphysics is a statement by 
Lodge on page 383 of the August number 1904 of Har- 
per's Magazine, "What electricity itself is we do not 
know, but it may perhaps be a form of or aspect of mat- 
ter. Now we can go one step further and say matter is 
composed of electricity and of nothing else." This use 
of natural metaphisics is within the probable bounds of 
knowledge. I presume this is the speculative sense in 
which any scientist would use it. But metaphysics in the 
ordinary meaning of that term is confined to speculations 
in the realm of the unknowable. 

Prior naturalists seemed to have confined their ob- 
servations to mere facts, or to points of difference and 
likeness of forms, without ever thinking even of the pos- 
sibility that these facts contained the evidence so effectu- 
ally used by Darwin in his "Origin of Species." 

Darwin was impressed with the theory of Malthus. 
This is, that human life increases in geometric ratio, 
while the means of subsistence multiply only in an arith- 
metical ratio. The theory will apply more fitly to wild 
animals than to man, because they have no way of artifi- 
cially increasing their food supply and adopt no methods 
of their own to restrict reproduction. As numbers in- 
crease there arises a struggle for existence, and that this 
struggle results in favor of those organisms best fitted 



32 PHYSICAL BASIS OF MIND AND MORALS 

to spread out over more territory and adapt themselves 
to new sources of sustenance and to new conditions of 
life, is undoubtedly a fact. If animal life were permit- 
ted to indefinitely increase, it would in a comparatively 
short time, fill the whole earth and devour all the means 
of subsistence. But only the best fitted have survived; 
the less fit have been overcome. The result has been a 
constant progress from the weak to the strong, from the 
simple to the complex, from the homogeneous to the 
heterogenous. The principle can be illustrated by the 
gradations of nerve structure in the organisms from the 
nerveless protozoa to the brain of man. The latter is 
complex in his mental as well as in his physical struc- 
ture, and therefore has almost infinitely wider relation- 
ship with his environment than the former. He is there- 
fore the better fitted to survive under any and all condi- 
tions. This holds good with all grades of animal life, 
in proportion to the complexity of the nerve structure. 

In chapter 4 of the "Principles of Biology" Spencer 
treats of the proximate definition of life, and shows that 
it means the same as his definition of evolution given 
heretofore. So that the title "From Homogeneity to 
Heterogeneity," means the evolving of the higher forms 
of life from the lower. The term "Higher Form" means 
a more heterogeneous structure and function. The 
"Moner" of Hseckel is the lowest evidence of life that 
we read about, it being a splotch of organic matter with- 
out form and having no cell formation. The matter of 
the "moner" is perfectly homogeneous. From this first 
life substance or protoplasm it is reasonable to infer that 
the cell was slowly evolved, which probably has taken 
more time, as geology marks time, than all the ages since 
the first cell was formed. 

Darwin made innumerable experiments on domestic 



A SHORT OUTLINE OF EVOLUTION 33 

animals and plants. Of course he could only set the ani- 
mal forms around him to doing what nature had always 
been doing in the perpetuation of wild animals. In do- 
mesticity, man, when making a business of producing 
animals and vegetables, destroys the unfavorable varia- 
tions and preserves the useful ones. This made the pro- 
cess of artificial selection operate only more rapidly than 
occurs in the wild state, and the changes that occurred 
could be seen by man ; while natural selection away from 
the vision of man occupies such long periods and oper- 
ates' so obscurely that man can seldom note its action di- 
rectly. The object of man's selection was entirely dif- 
ferent from the meaning of natural selection. Nature 
takes her own time, which undoubtedly is very long, in 
deriving a new species, not for the benefit of man, but 
for the benefit of the organism selected, and of the race 
to which it belongs, by the preservation of those best 
adapted to perpetuate the life of the species under the 
existing natural conditions. * 



* Hugo De Vries, of Amsterdam, contends that species are 
formed by variation and natural selection, but that the process 
is not a slow adaptation of minute variations. It is by a varia- 
tion by heredity constituting the species almost at once. Whether 
this is true or not, it does not invalidate the principle of evolu- 
tion by the survival of the fittest in the struggle for existence. 
The theory of De Vries, as I understand it, simply shortens the 
process of the same essential fact of Darwin's theory. 

Hugo De Vries says, "Those individuals survive that find 
their life condition most favorable, and they are therefore the 
most vigorous. Natural selection in the struggle for existence 
between the newly originated elementary species is quite differ- 
ent. These originate suddenly unmediated and multiply them- 
selves, if nothing stands in the way, because they are for the 
most part completely, or in a high degree, heritable. If then the 
increase leads to a struggle for sustenance the weaker succumb 
and are rooted out." 

I do not see the difference between this contention and that 
of Darwin's, except that Darwin thought that the variations were 
minute and that the time required for the formation of a new 



34 PHYSICAL BASIS OF MIND AND MORALS 

Natural selection then, is the preservation of the 
favorable individual inherited differences and variations. 
Variations neither useful nor injurious would not be af- 
fected by natural selection, but these are frequently per- 
petuated by heredity. The varieties of species produced 
by artificial means, revert in time to their natural struc- 
ture when man's control is withdrawn. It is not likely 
that artificial selection has been in existence long enough 
to produce a permanent species that would persist under 
natural environment, especially when the artificial con- 
ditions change to natural ones. 

Natural selection does not produce variations nor 
does it cause heredity, although Weisman adopted a the- 
ory that variations are produced by the selective process 
in the determinants of the germ plasm. But that theory 
is not generally received. Given heredity and variation; 
or as Haeckel calls it, adaptation; then natural selection 
simply means the continuation of the favorable, and the 
dying out of the unfavorable. Among the lower organ- 
isms especially, it is apparent that favorable always 
means those variations that can easiest procure the 
means of subsistence, and this is called the survival of 
the fittest. So that the full definition is, "Natural selec- 
tion in the survival of the fittest in the struggle for ex- 
istence." It will become evident by careful study that 
this method is really the only one adapted to build up a 
strong, enduring and capable organism. 

While the principle is quite apparent in the physical 
life of animals and man, it is more difficult to perceive 
it in the psychical life of man. Man is so heterogene- 



species was long.. De Vries thinks that new species are formed 
at once. The essential principle of transformation by heredity 
and variation is the same in both. 



A SHORT OUTLINE; OF EVOLUTION 35 

ous, especially in his mental functions and social rela- 
tions, that the action of the principle is much less easy 
to trace. Yet, the more the principle is studied, the 
stronger becomes the evidence that natural selection is 
operating just as powerfully in man and in all aggrega- 
tions of men ; in society, in governments, in churches, in 
barbarism, or in civilization, as in any animal organism. 
I can see no reason why the principle should not be the 
essential method through all phases of organic life. It 
is true that man seems to have a larger degree of con- 
trol of his functions than the lower animals. Conscious- 
ness and reflection* in the form of so-called memory, rea- 
son and will, seem to partially supersede natural selec- 
tion. But in my opinion this is only apparent, and cer- 
tainly not efficient to prevent the natural survival of the 
fittest in all organisms and methods ; not as man himself 
would select as the fittest, but what the persistence of 
force may determine by actual test to be so. 

It is frequently asserted that physiological evolution 
in the case of man, and especially in sociological evolu- 
tion, which really is only a phase of biological evolution 
in its higher forms, has been superseded, and arrested 
by the evolution of reason. Reason as defined by such 
asserters means the power of the organism to control its 
own development and its own functions. It means 
further, according to these, the ability to organize man- 
kind socially and morally, and in that way to arrest the 
principle of natural selection and introduce design where 
none existed before. This seems to be viewing reason 
as a creative entity. But the fact is, reason is nothing- 
more than one phase of the psychical aspect of the phys- 
iology of the brain, and can only be a result of physical 
molecular motion in certain centers of the brain tissue, 
and this is the product of biological evolution. Alfred 



36 PHYSICAL BASIS OF MIND AND MORALS 

Binet says, "reason is a synthesis of images," and that de- 
scribes it to me more accurately and definitely than any 
other definition I have seen. It is sense impression, 
arrested perhaps by not having the ordinary and oft 
repeated channels of movement which the emotions have, 
i. e. not being reflex, being a later evolved structure than 
that wrMch produces emotion or instinct. The" conscious 
psychical effect of this arrested reflex is called memory, 
reason, or imagination, according to the particular cen- 
ter of the cerebrum excited; and the final manifestation 
of the energy thus aroused, in nervous activity result- 
ing in muscular movement, is called will. The anatom- 
ical fact that in some way unknown a variation occasion- 
ally occurs in the way of added convolution in the cor- 
tex of the brain, gives the organism so favored new 
power in coordinating sense impressions. The human 
brain has evolved by reason of these variations to its 
present power and consciousness, or awareness, and thus 
a subjective feeling, that the individual can exercise the 
power of choice, has resulted. All the psychic phenom- 
ena beginning with the simple emotions, which perhaps 
at first were as difficult to express, as is now the highest 
thought, or reasoning in man, have been evolved by rea- 
son of those variations or differentiations. It is also 
likely that when man's present memory, reason and will, 
shall have been in use a sufficient time they will become. 
as automatic as are now the emotions. Then the new- 
born infant will have them as he now has fear, love and 
hatred. Then higher, more abstruse, more complex 
psychic phenomena will gradually appear in the mature 
human organism. 

"Civilized man enjoys an advantage over savage man 
far in advance even of those which arise from a settled 
state of society, incentives to an intellectual training, 



A SHORT OUTLINE OF EVOLUTION 37 

and so on. This inestimable advantage consists in the 
art of writing and the consequent transmission of the 
effects of culture from generation to generation. Quite 
apart from any question, as of hereditary transmission 
of acquired character, we see in this intellectual trans- 
mission of acquired experience a means of accumulative 
cultivation quite beyond our power to estimate. For un- 
like all other cases where we recognize the great influ- 
ence of individual use or practice in augmenting con- 
genital "faculties," (such as in the athletes, pianists, etc.) 
in this case the effects of special cultivation do not end 
with the individual life, but are carred on and on 
through successive generations ad infinitum. Hence a 
cultivated man inherits mentally, if not physically, the 
effects of culture for ages past, and this in whatever 
direction he may choose to profit therefrom. Moreover 
— and I deem this an immensely important addition — 
in this unique department of purely intellectual trans- 
mission, a kind of non-physical natural selection is per- 
petually engaged in producing the best results. For here 
a struggle for existence is constantly taking place among 
ideas, methods, and so forth, in what may be termed a 
psychological environment. The less fit are superseded 
by the more fit, and this not only in the mind of the in- 
dividual, but through language and literature, still more 
in the mind of the race. "A Newton, a Laplace, a Guass, 
or a Cayley" would all alike have been impossible, but 
for a previously prolonged course of mental evolution 
due to the selection principle operating in the region of 
mathematics by means of continuous survivals of the 
best products in successive generations. And of course, 
the same remark applies to art in all its branches." * 



'Darwinism of Darwin." Romanes. 



88 PHYSICAL BASIS OF MIND AND MORALS 

There is no doubt in my mind but that this arrested 
molecular motion, or reason as it has always been meta- 
physically denned, which gives us the feeling of choice 
or design subjectively, simply follows in its ultimate 
course the line of least resistance. In doing this, it pro- 
duces a feeling of satisfaction or more accurately it 
directs the tropisms or psychical tendencies of the organ- 
ism which results in what is called reason, just as the 
faint reproductions of former sensations called memory, 
are produced by a molecular movement closely allied to 
that which originally produced the sensation recalled. 
The line of least resistance to a sensation coming to the 
brain, is the product of a great variety of incident phases 
of the persistence of force, coming from the objective 
environment. It is modified very largely by the simple 
emotions of fear, anger, the affections, the sexual emo- 
tion and sense of possession; and by the multitudinous 
combinations of these in complex and secondary emo- 
tions. The common necessity of sustentation of the 
body and defense of life nearly always determines the 
final channels of sensations or feelings. In all cases, the 
final decision of so-called reason; i. e., the course the 
molecular process producing the mental hesitation will 
take, depends upon some motive outside of the so-called 
mind itself, operating through the emotions or instincts. 
Thus, in reality, what is called the mind of the organism, 
which is nothing but the aggregation of natural feelings 
produced by molecular or chemical motion, has no con- 
trol whatever in forcing this new power of the brain 
into any but natural channels, and only into such chan- 
nels as make for the physical welfare of the individual 
and his race. In fact, in my judgment, the former so- 
called faculties of reason, memory, will, or any function by 
which, according to the ideas heretofore prevailing, man 



A SHORT OUTLINE; OF EVOLUTION 39 

seems to choose for himself how his brain or any of his 
so-called faculties may act, are without any foundation 
in scientific investigation. They are conditions produced 
by objective sensations coming to the brain. The results 
are produced by these objective influences in the aggre- 
gate and are done so gently as to seem to the organism a 
matter of personal choice or power within himself. The 
facts of human existence in its utter dependence on its 
constant adjustment to objective environment for its con- 
tinuance, are seeming proofs of this position. The con- 
ditions greatly differ in different brains; hence, the dif- 
ference in the so-called reasoning power, will power, 
etc. That is, the reason is always determined by the 
individual nervous structure in its manner of respond- 
ing to objective influences. If this view, that psychical 
phenomena are produced by objective energy acting upon 
structure in the brain tissue producing function, is cor- 
rect in theory, then it is evident that they are governed 
by the same law of natural selection that govern all other 
phenomena. 

Man then, as a social and reasoning organism, is still 
evolving both biologically and psychologically. He can 
never hope to free himself from the biological laws of 
natural selection now, or at any future period of his 
evolution. There seems to be an assumption on the part 
of some authors that what we call the operations of the 
mind, are not produced by the natural physiology of the 
brain, but are produced in the brain through its struc- 
ture, and parallel with its physiological operations, by 
some unknown super-organic, or supernatural power, 
not natural energy, that has never yet been defined, 
superior to the primal element — matter or energy. The 
older Cartesian idea is that the mind is a spiritual entity 
having power within itself to freely control the force or 



40 PHYSICAL BASIS OF MIND AND MORALS 

energy of nature, working through the brain structure 
in producing thought. 

Parallelists acknowledge the most unaccountable, or 
not understood phenomena in objective environment as 
the natural product of matter and motion. Yet when it 
comes to accounting for what are called psychical phe- 
nomena they refuse to acknowledge that even the grey 
matter of the brain acted upon by sense impressions has 
any real power to produce them, because this is material- 
ism. Why they are so afraid of matter and motion, and 
why it is so necessary to go beyond the apparent or per- 
ceptible results of molecular process to thus attribute 
them to an unknown and ^indefinable cause, is beyond 
my comprehension. 

I think when evolution, as conceived by Darwin, is 
fully comprehended by the mass of mankind, it will be 
seen that all phenomena, physical or psychical, are the 
results of evolution and its processes. They are the pro- 
ducts of that interchange of matter and motion going 
on everywhere, by a process of integration and dissipa- 
tion so exceedingly slow that man can never perceive 
either the beginning or the end of any single phase of it. 

My theory is that there cannot be two separate inde- 
pendent forces operating in the realm of what is called 
nature — the one called natural, and therefore evolu- 
tionary; and the other spiritual, and not subject to the 
laws of evolution, nor the result of it. All phenomena 
usually called spiritual, or psychical, are one in true 
cause with other interchanges of matter and motion, and 
matter and motion are one in reality — the Unity of phe- 
nomena has the dual aspect of structure and function. 
Psychical phenomena cease when that interchange of 
matter and motion ceases. They exist only in connection 
with nerve molecular motion. Each brain produces its 



A SHORT OUTLINE OF EVOLUTION 41 

peculiar manifestations for that brain only. These peculiar 
manifestations or functions are not produced elsewhere, 
nor continued after the disintegration of the brain, un- 
less by an equivalent quantity and quality of living brain 
tissue. 

Spencer's definition of an idea is: "A wave of mole- 
cular motion diffused through them," ("an involved set 
of nervous plexuses,") "will produce as its psychical 
correlative, the components of the conception in due 
order and degree. The idea lasts while the waves of 
molecular motion last, ceasing when they cease ; but that 
which remains is the set of plexuses." This means that 
the nervous structure in the brain which has been 
evolved biologically is the permanent determinant of 
ideas. Therefore all laws of evolution apply to psychical 
as well as to physical phenomena. 

Every so-called action of the will, and every psych- 
ical action, e. g., every thought, is determined either by 
the preservation of self or of the race. Therefore the 
law of evolution in physical biology, which is the pres- 
ervation of the individual and the race, must apply 
equally to all forms of psychical phenomena. Ethics 
and esthetics both of which properly interpreted are the 
harmonization of the ego to a higher and more perfect 
environment, have been developed in the same way. 
They come only with increasing heterogeneity of brain; 
and that has undoubtedly been brought about by the sim- 
ple principle of natural selection, the survival of that 
type of brain which gave ability to adapt one's organism 
to higher and larger environment. We must not lose 
sight, in the study of this principle, of the fact that neural 
variations are very obscure, and that natural selection 
acts on them for the benefit of the race and not always 
to the apparent advantage of the individual. 



42 PHYSICAL BASIS OF MIND AND MORALS 

We know from our own observations upon which we 
base human law that whatever seems wisest and best, even 
to ourselves, eventually survives; and whatever is wisest 
and best should be fittest. But remember at the same 
time that our human ideas of the best and the fittest are 
not always the same as the wide reaching methods of 
cosmic forces. As one instance of the operation of nat- 
ural selection in the survival of the best in human insti- 
tutions take the illustration of the celebrated lawyer, 
who, in commenting on the evolution of the common 
law of England, in its wonderful adaptation to the pres- 
ervation of the best interests of man in his govern- 
mental relations, said that if all the criminals who 
were condemned by the law could be placed on a lone 
island in mid-ocean and left to their own control, they 
would, as a matter of self-preservation, be compelled to 
adopt the very code of laws by which they had been con- 
demned. This might not occur until a large number had 
been annihilated through ignorance by a violation of the 
natural laws of sociology and obedience to an unfit 
criminal code. Then the common law being found best 
fitted to preserve the natural laws, would be necessarily 
adopted. That is, those who have a variation of struc- 
ture enabling them to keep in harmony with natural and 
social law survive, and those who do not, die. Man's 
artificial selection of customs or habits must be in con- 
formity with the natural selection of cosmic law. Eng- 
land's common law was strong and sufficing only as it 
co-ordinated with natural law. 

Whether the process of organic evolution is accounted 
for by natural selection, which Darwin defines as the 
preservation of variations favorable to the individual in 
its struggle for existence, or by sexual selection, which 
contributes to the perpetuation of the race, or by the use 



A SHORT OUTLINE: OF EVOLUTION 43 

or disuse of parts, yet all these processes, advanced also 
by Darwin, are natural as contradistinguished from spe- 
cial creation. It seems to me also that they could all be 
classified under the head of natural selection, in which 
case the definition should be enlarged to read : the adap- 
tation of individual variations favorable to the organism 
in its struggle for existence, and to the propagation of 
the race. If there occur in the brain of a bird, for in- 
stance, a variation of structure making it a lover of the 
beautiful, as is the case with the Bow r er bird, while that 
fact may not seem to us to materially aid that bird in 
its struggle for mere existence, yet it undoubtedly does 
so. The main point is, however, that all these differ- 
ences are within the realm of natural cause and effect 
and the theory does not require the investigator to 
assume any other cause. 

Such are, in very brief outlines, a few of the evi- 
dences of the great principle of evolution and its uni- 
versal applicability occurring to the author. Mr. Dar- 
win in his great discovery, as set forth in the most im- 
portant and most original book published in the nine- 
teenth century, "The Origin of Species," discusses the 
subject elaborately and, to me very convincingly. How- 
ever, it is well to remark that it is a theory which scien- 
tists have generally adopted, because it requires less 
assumption, and is more capable of scientific proof than 
any other. It depends upon the manifestations of phe- 
nomena only for its verification and not upon assump- 
tions of either cause or origin. 

Evolutionists do not pretend to. account for the or- 
igin of matter and motion, because they have no sensory 
proof. Such very able scientists as Spencer, Huxley, 
and Haeckel, however, say that there is very strong sci- 
entific evidence that life is an obscure form of that nat- 



44 PHYSICAL BASIS OF MIND AND MORALS 

ural interaction of matter and motion, which is con- 
stantly going on around us. Haeckel asserts with posi- 
tiveness, that while as yet, it is impossible to produce 
life in the chemical laboratory, except some forms of 
organic matter which are the excretion of organisms, that 
is, without cell formation, yet it has been discovered 
that organic matter is made up of inorganic substances. 
While as yet positive proof does not exist of the manner 
of the change of the inorganic into the organic, yet I 
believe that all life has been evolved from the inorganic. 
There seems to be an entire absence of proof, that any- 
thing, even what the inaccurate thinker terms "The prin- 
ciple of life," was specially created. 



CHAPTER II 

CHARLES R. DARWIN THE EXPONENT OF EVOLUTION 

I. Personality and Work. — It is an interesting co- 
incidence, that in writing in a popular strain of Charles 
Robert Darwin and his genius, Abraham Lincoln's 
name should come in mind. For he and Darwin were 
born on the same day — February 12, 1809 ; the Ameri- 
can in poverty and obscurity in a primitive cabin in Ken- 
tucky, and Darwin in luxury and wealth in Shrewsbury, 
England. In many physical and mental traits, however, 
they were very much alike, but principally in having 
that rare quality in common, of absolute honesty per- 
meating their whole organisms, in their three aspects of 
physical, mental and moral. One more word about Lin- 
coln. In any course of lectures delivered by the most 
prominent platform orators in this nation, nine out of 
ten, whatever may be their subjects, will have something 
eulogistic to say of Abraham Lincoln. This is very high 
evidence of an immortality of character attained by only 
a few men. 

Darwin was one of the gentlest and most lovable of 
men.. He was six feet tall, awkward and unpretending; 
modest in the extreme. He did not stand particularly 
high in school, hated the classics, and says he learned 
nothing valuable at Cambridge, where he graduated. He 
was very fond of hunting, and very early developed great 
taste for making collections of insects, and especially of 
beetles. Prof. Henslow of Cambridge took a great fancy 

45 



46 PHYSICAL BASIS OF MIND AND MORALS 

to him, and when Captain Fitzroy, of Her Majesty's 
ship "Beagle," wanted Henslow to recommend a natural- 
ist for the contemplated voyage of that ship around the 
world, via Cape Horn, Henslow recommended Darwin. 
Darwin's father objected, because, among other reasons, 
it would spoil him for a clergyman. But he finally gave 
his consent, and then Captain Fitzroy came near reject- 
ing him, because his nose was not the right shape. Thus 
between theology and the shape of his nose, the world 
came near losing the results of the wonderful scientific 
observations and collections made on that most import- 
ant expedition. 

Going on the voyage of the Beagle did spoil him for 
a clergyman, but not in the way his father anticipated. 
It made him instead a minister of the great biological 
truths of nature to the coming generations of men. He 
was then nearly twenty-three years old. He remained 
on that voyage five years, collecting and working on the 
innumerable dissections of insects, reptiles, and fishes, 
birds and mammals, gathered both on sea and land. His 
collection, brought home, weighed several tons. Upon 
his return to England in 1837, he began his life work as 
a naturalist. From the time in 1832, when he started on 
the voyage of the Beagle until he died at the age of 73, 
he never ceased his labor in this field of investigation. 
However firmly convinced he afterwards became in his 
own mind of evolution by natural selection, yet he never 
ceased to gather new facts tending to further confirm it, 
or if he discovered anything not in accordance with it, 
he did not hesitate to make it as public as possible and 
discuss its bearing. For instance, as illustrative of his 
patient industry, in studying Geographical Distribution, 
he experimented with seeds and reptile's eggs by soak- 
ing them in salt sea water, to determine whether they 



CHARLES R- DARWIN 47 

would float or sink, or lose in any reasonable time the 
power of fertilization. He thus proved that some eggs 
and seeds could float from continent to island, and then 
propagate. He patiently tested them with heat, to see 
at what temperature their fertility would be destroyed; 
thus indirectly showing at what stage of the cooling of 
the earth, life could exist. He scraped the mud from 
bird's feet, tested it for the seeds or eggs of insects it 
might contain, and carefully cultivated it to see what 
would grow. He tested every conceivable mode of geo- 
graphical distribution. He went among dog and pigeon 
fanciers, among the slums, to learn their methods of pro- 
ducing variation under domestication, and at the same 
time would write to college professors to make experi- 
ments for him. He planted earth worms in the ground 
at Down, where he lived, waited for them to make the 
loam on top of the former level, thick enough to meas- 
ure. Noting the time, he calculated how many feet they 
would make in a century. It is no wonder that few 
writers on evolution at the present day, can go far with- 
out drawing on Darwin for their facts and illustrations. 
Think of working eight years on barnacles, so small that 
all the dissections had to be done under a microscope. 

So fond was he of field work and so absorbed all his 
life in practical experiments, that he never found time 
to cultivate the art of composition, and said himself, that 
he could not express himself well on paper. He was 
therefore frequently misunderstood, even by naturalists. 

Darwin, in speaking of the teleology that some men 
see in the 1 beauty of animals and flowers, says : "If beau- 
tiful objects had been created solely for man's gratifica- 
tion, it ought to be shown that before man appeared, 
such objects were less beautiful than now." Then fur- 
ther on he says, "Flowers rank among the most beauti- 



48 PHYSICAL BASIS OF MIND AND MORALS 

ful of productions but they have been rendered con- 
spicuous in contrast with the green leaves, and in con- 
sequence, at the same time beautiful, so that they may 
be easily observed by insects." 

I think this is one of the lapses Darwin frequently 
falls into. The latter statement presupposes design, 
and in the language used is strictly teleological. Darwin 
does not intend it so, but it is opposed to the spirit of 
natural selection. He meant the trees or shrubs that 
from unknown combinations of forces brought forth 
conspicuous flowers, were the ones visited by insects, 
who by carrying the pollen to other trees of the same 
genus, thus perpetuated the genus. The flowers were 
not created for the purpose of attracting the insects. 
There was no design. Those trees whose flowers con- 
stituted a favorable variation attracted the means of 
fertilization and were the ones perpetuated. This 
brings the statement within the meaning of natural 
selection. 

Darwin seems to have unconsciously written at times 
as if there were special creation, and frequently refers 
to natural selection, as a positive force that caused vari- 
ation. His letters written in later life show how he 
regretted having used language in his publications tend- 
ing to convey the idea of design. The sense of beauty 
in the mind of man and of the lower animals is an evo- 
lution. The nervous system was evolved in correspond- 
ence only with the objective realities in the environment. 
The senses, therefore, respond to what tends to the 
physical good of the organism — this is pleasure; and 
repel what is bad — this is pain. What appears beau- 
tiful to us, gives pleasure. Ugliness is the sense of 
pain coming through the senses. The colors of the flow- 
ers, the optical restfulness of the green of vegetation, 



CHARLES R. DARWIN 49 

were not made to attract or give pleasure to man or 
animal. But man's and animal's eyes were evolved in 
correspondence to these objective realities, that existed 
long before animal life — at least, the chlorophyl of 
plants existed prior to animal life. Under the head of 
causes of variation, Darwin says, "Considerations in- 
cline me to lay less stress on the direct action of sur- 
rounding conditions, than on a tendency to vary, due to 
causes of which we are quite ignorant." 

Natural selection does not apply until the variations 
occur, therefore natural selection cannot be a cause of 
variation. Among the illustrations of the selective prin- 
ciple he refers to two-hundred species of beetles in the 
island of Madeira, that are so far wingless that they 
cannot fly. These are preserved by the operation of the 
principle of natural selection, in that the winds of that 
island blow those that rise on the wing into the sea, and 
drown them, while those that do not fly survive and 
propagate. This is natural selection not in producing 
the deficiency of wings, but the inability to fly causes 
the heredity of this condition. But it must have taken 
several generations of beetles to make so radical a 
change in the structure of the wings. In any event, I 
do not see how natural selection can, of itself, be a 
means of variation in structure. It is true Darwin did 
not pretend to account for variation in the sense of de- 
termining when a useful variation really occurs, nor on 
what its appearance depends, nor the space of time 
required for the fulfillment of the selective process; but 
he established the fact that selection must be the process 
and others, like August Weisman, have been trying to 
solve the problems of heredity and variation. Numer- 
ous writers upon evolution, including even Prof. Hux- 
ley, minimize the selective theory, but as Weisman re- 



50 PHYSICAL BASIS OF MIND AND MORALS 

marks, "I am so thoroughly Convinced of its indispens- 
abilitv as to believe that its demolition would be synony- 
mous with the renunciation of all enquiry concerning 
the causal relaton of vital phenomena." To my mind 
the real reason why so many scientists neglect or decry 
the principle, is the hold in various direct and indirect 
ways that theology has upon human thought and mental 
motives. 

Darwin says, "Whoever is led to believe that species 
are mutable, will do good service by conscientiously ex- 
pressing his convictions; for thus only can the load of 
prejudice by which this subject is overwhelmed, be 
removed." — Conclusion of Chapter X, "Origin of 
Species." 

To my mind, the most important discovery of the 
nineteenth century was the principle of evolution by 
natural selection in the survival of the fittest. Prior to 
this century, man was blindly groping after the truths 
of natural phenomena. As soon as La Marck, Darwin 
and Spencer discovered a natural method, at once the 
prior mythical theories faded away from the minds of 
scientific men. So, too, did a priori conclusions of all 
metaphysicians, except such as were afterwards proved 
by induction to be in consonance with the laws of evo- 
lution. 

Darwin wrote a large number of books that are 
standards in science. His thoughts were so important 
to the world, that other writers, by the score, have been 
trying ever since the publication of his "Origin of Spe- 
cies" and "Descent of Man," to enlarge and explain his 
meaning. I have yet failed, however, to read one of 
them with so much satisfaction as Darwin, whose some- 
what awkward style, is yet so convincing. His works 



CHARLES R. DARWIN 51 

carry upon their face the emblem of sincerity and trans- 
cendent originality. 

It was the same way with Robert Burns' poetry. 
Notwithstanding he wrote in a dialect unknown outside 
of Scotland, yet the world keeps delving away at it, 
digging through the homely provincial terminology to 
get at the precious jewels of truth hidden therein. 

At the time of his appointment as naturalist to the 
Beagle, Henslow wrote Darwin that he was no natural- 
ist, but not to hesitate on that account; that he could 
make collections, and fill the position better than any 
one else then available. But Huxley says that after 
Darwin's return from the voyage, his work upon bar- 
nacles alone, made him a thorough naturalist. Darwin 
at times thought that this work was largely thrown away. 
He also became a geologist and a botanist, but he was 
perhaps deeper, versed in zoology, than any other branch 
of science. His work on, "Expression of Emotion in 
Man and Animals," shows that he knew something of 
psychology though he did not call it that. He was a 
naturalist, pure and simple, not looking nor evidently 
caring for the origin of life or matter, which he con- 
sidered beyond our knowledge. ' 

He was a wonderful observer, and always drew from 
his observations some general principle that was new 
and startling. For instance, in his "Fertilization of 
Plants," he discovered the great principle that natural 
selection did not favor close fertilization. Cross fertili- 
zation produced more vigorous offspring and more num- 
erous variations, and these survived under the principle 
of natural selection, while the products of close fertili- 
zation had a tendency, under the same principle, to 
die out. 

Alfred Russell Wallace, whose article on "Evolution 



52 PHYSICAIv BASIS OF MIND AND MORALS 

by Natural Selection" was read before the Linnaean 
Society in 1858, simultaneously with Darwin's, says in 
a recent article, "Of late years, and chiefly since Dar- 
win's works were written, the variability of animals and 
plants in a state of nature has been carefully studied 
by actual comparison and measurement of scores, hun- 
dreds, and even thousands of individuals of many com- 
mon, that is, abundant and widely distributed species; 
and it is found that in almost every case they vary 
greatly; and what is still more important, that every 
organ and every appendage varies independently and to 
a large amount. By large variability is meant a varia- 
tion of from ten to twenty-five per cent, on each side of 
the mean size, this amount of variation occurring in at 
least five or ten per cent, of the whole number of indi- 
viduals, and in every organ or part, as yet examined, 
external or internal." Darwin's work on "Earth 
Worms" raised those obscure and hitherto unnoticed 
organisms to the rank of intelligent and exceedingly 
useful workers. They are makers of productive soil. 

In the meantime he had experimented with great 
energy and wonderful ability with domestic animals, 
especially pigeons, in producing variations and new spe- 
cies by artificial selection. This was easy. The prob- 
lem then presented was how to prove that Nature did 
approximately the same things in producing all the vari- 
eties and species of animals in the wild state. It was on 
the voyage of the Beagle that he was first struck with the 
similarity of paleontological, or fossil forms, with those 
then living in the same localities. But years passed be- 
fore he was convinced of the mutability of species, and 
then he still refused to see the immense consequences, 
sure, eventually to arise from this discovery. The evi- 
dence finally became so overwhelming to his mind, that 



CHARLES R. DARWIN 53 

organic evolution by natural selection is the process by 
which living forms have come into their present innum- 
erable shapes, that in 1844, he first wrote a paper upon 
the subject. The very large collection of specimens 
and the wise observations made on the voyage of the 
Beagle, enabled him, together with his studies subse- 
quently from 1837 to I S58, to write what he calls, the 
abstract of his work on the "Origin of Species," and 
publish it in 1859, in practically the same form in which 
we now have it, although it was added to, and sub- 
tracted from in all the six editions, which he had revised 
prior to his death on April 19, 1882. 

His sense of fairness was so pronounced that the 
most of the "Origin of Species" is taken up in discuss- 
ing the numerous objections that scientists had advanced 
against the theory. His mind was essentially inductive 
in its reasoning. His theory was based entirely on facts 
patent to the senses. He was, in no sense, controversial, 
nor metaphysical. The mere debating society methods 
of discussion, he sensibly left to others. Great truths 
are not determined in that way. 

II. His Theory and Genius. — Although his pub- 
lished works are numerous, his great fame as a man of 
transcendent genius rests principally upon the "Origin 
of Species." 

His genius consisted of two elements : — First, his 
great capacity for efficient industry; Second, his ability 
to derive from his observations and experiments the 
principle of Natural Selection. Huxley exclaimed when 
he first read the "Origin of Species," "Why could not I 
have drawn the same conclusions from the same well 
known facts." 

Natural selection, or as Haeckel calls it, "adaptation 
and heredity," or as Spencer most aptly puts it, "the sur- 



54 PHYSICAL BASIS OF MIND AND MORALS 

vival of the fittest," means that when a variation occurs 
in the form, always, followed or accompanied by a varia- 
tion in the function, which is beneficial to the plant or 
animal in its struggle for existence, that form is the one 
that survives and propagates itself. As Darwin says, 
"Only a few of those annually born can live to propa- 
gate their kind. What a trifling difference must deter- 
mine which shall live and which shall die." It is this 
trifling difference, spread over incalculable time, that 
finally produced all the different species on the globe, 
from one cell, or something even lower than a cell. Per- 
haps the best illustration I can give of what is meant by 
evolution by natural selection is that all organisms have 
developed from lower organisms in much the same way 
that every higher organism now developes in embryo- 
logical growth, from a minute cell to its matured form. 
"The embryo of a higher animal of any group, passes 
now through stages represented by lower forms, because 
in the evolution, its ancestors did actually have those 
forms." * 

Darwin's correspondence for the first few years after 
the publication of the "Origin," shows how agitated he 
was, and how fearful that his theory would be over- 
whelmed or fall flat. But when the first day of its pub- 
lication, the entire edition of 1,250 copies was sold, and 
soon after another edition of 3,000, it gave him more 
confidence. Innumerable adverse reviews appeared im- 
mediately, or in 1860-1861. 

One favorite way of holding him up to the ridicule of 
the unscientific was to asseverate that Darwin claimed that 
man was descended from the present race of monkeys. 
I think Prof. Le Conte of the University of California, 



* "Evolution," Prof. Le Conte. 



CHARGES R. DARWIN 55 

has placed the answer to this in the best light by saying, 
"No living form of animal is on its way manward, or 
can by any possibility develop into man. The parting 
between the ancestors of man, and those of monkeys, 
occurred many ages ago. They are all gone out of the 
way." Also, say the unbelievers, "If species are derived 
by slow modifications and descent from other species, 
show us the missing links." Darwin answered, "If you 
will show me the missing link between greyhound and 
bulldog, I will." In fact the missing links are apparent in 
the mutual affinities of all organisms. The analogy of 
function and the homology of the structure of all verte- 
brates show their common origin. The wing of a bird, 
and the hand of a man, are simply modifications of the 
same structure. 

Yet occasionally, a favorable review of the "Origin" 
was given, and very unexpectedly one in the London 
Times, of two and a half pages. When Darwin read it, he 
thought he recognized the geinus of his friend Huxley, 
in the scientific bearing of the logic, and at once sat down 
and wrote him if he could tell him who the author was ? 
Of course the truth came out, that a copy of the "Origin" 
had been sent to the regular book reviewer of the Times, 
who could not understand the book, and therefore could 
not write about it. In this dilemma, the reviewer ap- 
plied to a scientist, who happened to be a believer in 
evolution by natural selection. He recommended him 
to apply to Huxley, and let him write the review. Then 
the regular reviewer could write at the beginning of 
Huxley's review a few introductory sentences and in- 
sert, it without further addition just as Huxley would 
write it. This is what was done. It was just what Hux- 
ley, as a friend of Darwin's, had been trying to accom- 
plish, viz., to get a favorable notice of the book in the 



56 PHYSICAL BASIS OF MIND AND MORALS 

Times. Huxley would afterward laughingly tell that a 
great many of his friends, after they found that Huxley 
wrote it, told him that they discovered his authorship 
from the first introductory sentences, and these he did 
not write. 

As a specimen (see page 341, Vol. 1, ''Life and Let- 
ters of Darwin," by his son) of how the unscientific 
mind was affected by the "Origin of Species," Darwin 
writes that Lord Stanhope said to him, "To suppose that 
the Omnipotent God made a world, found it a failure, 
broke it up, and then made it again, and again broke it 
up, as the geologists say, is all fiddle-faddle. Describ- 
ing species of birds and shells, is all fiddle-faddle." And 
the common sailors of the Beagle called Darwin a "fly- 
catcher." In this same letter in which Darwin writes 
the above about Lord Stanhope to Lyell, the geologist, 
he writes some very interesting things. He says, "I 
work now every day at the Cirripeda (barnacles) for 
two and a half hours, and so get on a little, but very 
slowly. I sometimes, after being a whole week employed 
and having perhaps described only two species, agree 
mentally with Lord Stanhope, that it is all "fiddle-fad- 
dle" ; however, the other day I got a curious case of an 
unisexual cirripeda, in which the female had the com- 
mon cirripedal character, and in two valves of her shell 
had two little pockets, in each of which she kept a little 
husband. I do not know of any other case, where a 
female invariable has two husbands." 

III. The Effect on Current Theology. — His life 
work, although not undertaken with any design to sub- 
vert the thoughts of mankind concerning creation, yet 
logically and necessarily had that effect. But mankind 
have always resisted with marvelous and unexplainable 
fury, any disturbance of their settled supernatural be- 



CHARLES R. DARWIN 57 

liefs. It was so when Copernicus discovered the true 
motions of the solar bodies, when Newton announced 
the law of gravitation, and much more so when Darwin 
published that animals, including man, were not special 
creations, but evolutions from lower orders. When one 
comes to analyze the beliefs of men, it is very singular 
that men cling so tenaciously to a mere subjective idea, 
which when tested by the re-agent of objective truth is 
found to be without any scientific evidence whatever. 
Lady Macbeth said, "Tis the eye of childhood that fears 
a painted devil." While it is possible that Darwin came 
nearer being open to the truth as Nature teaches it, than 
most investigators, yet so strong a hold upon nearly all 
mankind has the belief in the super-natural as organized 
in the different systems of theology and education 
throughout the world, that even he shrank for years 
after he was intellectually convinced, from making any 
public announcement of that fact. The virulent attacks 
made upon him soon after the appearance of his great 
work, justified that hesitation. 

Mr. Darwin himself, tried to maintain as much of 
theistic ideas as he thought compatible with a mainten- 
ance of his theory. So did Spencer and almost every 
scientist. Darwin was compelled finally, after repeated- 
ly being misunderstood and misrepresented, to write as 
follows in one of his letters : "But I have long regretted 
that I truckled to public opinion and used the Penta- 
teuchal term of creation, by which I really meant, ap- 
peared by some wholly unknown process. It is mere 
rubbish, thinking at present of the origin of life; one 
might as well think of the origin of matter." * 

Darwin was not the first one to mention evolution as 



*Life of Darwin by his son. Pp. 202-203. 



58 PHYSICAL BASIS OF MIND AND MORALS 

a fact. But he was the first to ascertain and prove the 
process by inductive reasoning. He established the fact 
that species are formed in nature by gradual extinction 
of the unfavorable and perpetuation of the favorable 
variations. The universal belief prior to this was, that 
species were specially created by an omnipotent creative 
spiritual entity. A mere statement of the theory is suf- 
ficient to show its immense purport and the astounding 
and powerful opposition it would receive. It was such 
a revolution in human thought, which before attributed 
all creative power to the supernatural, that it took Dar- 
win several years to convince his own mind, and not 
during his life did he carry the discovery, in any of his 
public writings, to its full logical sequence, although he 
did in his private letters. 

Huxley and some of the German scientists, in carry- 
ing on the work where Darwin left it, show its bearing 
upon current thought. Especially so does Herbert 
Spencer in his great work, "The Synthetic Philosophy. 1 ' 
Darwin's more intimate personal friends, Prof. Hens- 
low, who was his sponsor as naturalist on the Beagle, 
Lyell, the great geologist, Hooker, the English and Asa 
Gray, the American botanist, bosom friends, while giv- 
ing him every encouragement in publishing the "Orig- 
in," never in their writings went as far in support of 
the theory as Darwin himself ; and while this fact seemed 
to hurt Darwin's feelings very much, yet in his letters 
gently urging them to publicly announce the truth of 
the ultimate effect of natural selection, he always said to 
them that he was not surprised, knowing as he did, 
what a struggle he had to convince himself. He was not 
convinced until the facts became overwhelming under 
his own investigations of natural organic phenomena. 
At first Darwin could not give up the idea of design in 



CHARGES R. DARWIN 59 

nature, maintained by Paley in his Natural Theology, a 
book that Darwin had closely read with the greatest ad- 
miration. But later he saw clearly how the idea of 
design was incompatible with the theory, and so he 
wrote to Asa Gray, then a professor of Botany in Har- 
vard College, who really wanted to be- a Darwinian Evo- 
lutionist, but could not give up the idea of design, as 
follows : "Your question, what would convince me of 
design, is a poser. If I saw an angel come down to 
teach us good, and I was convinced from others seeing 
him that I was not mad, I should believe in design. If 
I could be convinced thoroughly that life and mind was 
(were) in an unknown way, a function of other' impond- 
erable force" (meaning a spiritual, supernatural force) 
"I should be convinced. If man was made of brass or 
iron, and in no way connected with any other organism 
which had ever lived, I should be convinced. But this 
is childish writing. I have lately been corresponding 
with Lyell, who I think adopts your idea of the stream 
of variation having been led or designed. I have asked 
him (and he says he will hereafter reflect and answer 
me) whether he believes that the shape of the nose was 
designed." (He might have answered, "Yes, I believe 
it was so designed, that Captain Fitzroy might reject 
you as a naturalist on the Beagle.") "If. he does," Dar- 
win says, "I have nothing more to say. If not, seeing 
what fanciers have done by selecting individual differ- 
ences in the nasal bones of pigeons, I must think it is 
illogical to suppose that the variations which natural 
selection preserves, for the good of any being, are de- 
signed." * 

Of course, it was natural that many kind hearts, who 



* Life and Letters, by his son. Pp. 169-170. 



60 PHYSICAL BASIS OF MIND AND MORALS 

saw the force of Darwin's facts, connected logically by 
his transparent and convincing reason, wrote him innum- 
erable letters asking him, in various different ways, yet 
all leading to the same all-pressing question, whether he 
meant to do away in mental thought with the universal 
belief in the omnipotent Creator. His answers uni- 
formly gave the writers some consolation. He had a 
horror of hurting the feelings of any one. 

The theory of evolution simply changes the form of 
our ideas of God. The ultimate reality can not be an 
anthropomorphic God, but he is Cosmic, compatible 
with scientific interpretation of phenomena. The only 
conception of him possible is, subjective, phenomena only 
not the "Unknowable Absolute" being objective. Car- 
dinal Newman held that apart from an interior and un- 
reasoned conviction there is no cogent proof of the ex- 
istence of God. 

"The persistence of force" or the figurative expres- 
sion "Nature," is only another name for God. It is not 
anthropomorphic. It never changes. Appeals for a 
change of its laws are never heard. Whatever it does 
is for the good of the whole universe. It is infinitely 
kind to those who observe its laws. It works constantly 
towards strength and harmony. Weakness is constantly 
giving way to strength, and comparative strength to 
greater strength. It is constantly doing the best for 
mankind, because mankind is a part of phenomena, and 
phenomena are the results of the cosmic operations of 
the persistance of force. Therefore it does not answer 
prayer. It could not do so without introducing changes 
that would eventually cause the annihilation of man- 
kind. It recognizes only that knowledge and wisdom 
which control man's real relationship with phenomena. 
It carefully protects him who knows how to avoid those 



CHARGES R. DARWIN 61 

natural catastrophes so destructive to life on this little 
globe. But when it does destroy individual life it is care- 
ful that nothing essential is lost. The form only is 
changed to other forms and all the retained energy even 
is preserved for use in combining the elements again 
into newer and perhaps higher and more complex bodies. 
The processes cannot be changed by any desire that man 
may express to have it otherwise. This is scientific 
religion. 

Charles Darwin was an absolutely honest man. He 
would always state the case against himself. If he found 
himself on the wrong road in his scientific investigations, 
he would instantly turn about face and follow the trail 
just as it was blazed by the facts, wherever they led. He 
was a seeker after the truth only, and not to establish a 
preconceived theory. He founded his theory upon the 
facts disclosed by phenomena. He did not assume a 
theory and then publish only those facts which sup- 
ported it. He published all the facts, and all the objec- 
tions to the -theory. Then, by inductive reasoning, he 
connected the facts together into the most reasonable 
conclusion that could be drawn from them. Darwin 
simply made plainer what before was more or less dimly 
perceived by every thoughtful observer, that the current 
and historical theory that happiness or pleasure in the 
creature is a design of the Creator, is a misconception. 
He emphasized by his discoveries the fact that the appar- 
ent design, if that word must be used, is the evolution 
of the complex sentiency from the materials at hand, and 
that natural selection by the survival of the fittest, 
though harsh and painful to the unfit individuals, is the 
only method to accomplish that end. ' But it is more than 
probable that design, in our conception of it, does not 



62 PHYSICAL BASIS OF MIND AND MORALS 

enter into the problem. The ultimate meaning is, of 
course, beyond the limitations of human knowledge. 

There is very much published misconception of the 
principle of evolution by natural selection. There is no 
more striking method of emphasizing the reasonableness 
of the principle than to first quote some of these and 
then point out wherein they fail to reach the real mean- 
ing of the theory. Robert Mackintosh, B. D„ M. A., 
D. D., in his work, "From Comte to Benjamin Kidd, the 
Appeal to Biology or Evolution for Human Guidance," 
says, "Natural selection seems to imply transferring of 
minute random variations into definite serviceable 
changes. If everywhere there is movement, the move- 
ment ought everywhere to result in progressive effici- 
ency or adaptiveness." 

Natural selection is a negative, not an active positive 
force. It does not transform. When the variations nat- 
urally occur and are serviceable to the organism in its 
struggles or efforts for existence, when they become 
hereditary, tend to establish new species. The new spe- 
cies will be better adapted than the species from which 
it is descended to its environment, and we may call that 
progression. Some movement results in "progressive 
efficiency" when there is integration of matter into com- 
plex organic forms. But how about the "movement" 
of disintegration, or dissipation of motion, such as death 
brings with it? The word "ought" presupposes design 
or teleology in the way of "progressive efficiency" as 
man comprehends it. But man has no conception of the 
design or meaning of the aggregate phenomena of the 
Universe. Therefore he fails to comprehend what real 
progress is, or what movements tend toward progres- 
sion. 

If Mr. Mackintosh cannot see progress so far in the 



CHARLES R. DARWIN 63 

evolution of the Universe as it now is from the original 
nebula, perhaps he may think there has been progress in 
the theological hypothesis that man only six thousand 
years ago was created perfect and so degenerated by 
the time of the flood that his Creator had to annihilate 
him and start man again; that he again so degenerated 
that the Creator then sent his Son to die on the cross 
to redeem him. If he find fault with the former theory 
because at all points it does not show to his mind pro- 
gressive efficiency, what can he say in favor of the latter 
theory in that regard? 

He further says, "Dissatisfied with my dwelling, I 
built myself a house exactly suited to my personal needs. 
That is real improvement. But forthwith I have to 
accept an appointment in a different town, and must sell 
my new house at a loss for whatever it will fetch." But 
at this point his argument fails. The building of his 
house was not a real improvement, because his volun- 
tary acceptance of a call to another place compelled him 
to sell his house at a sacrifice. As a "designer" of his 
own permanent welfare he was a failure. He should 
not have built a home that he would have to sacrifice so 
soon. It is more than probable that natural selection in 
the survival of the fittest does not do things this way. 
"The improvement due to building for myself is for- 
feited and turns to the opposite. Now, in the far-off 
past, our planet is said to have passed through more 
than one ice age. Of course, so tremendous a change in 
environmental conditions involved the forfeiture of past 
progress." (Does not this prove that progress,- as we 
conceive it, is not a part of phenomena?) "The tests 
were all (however gradually) altered. The last became 
first, and the first last. The unfit were not found fit; 
while the fit proved unfit. Physiological capital was 



64 PHYSICAL BASIS OF MIND AND MORALS 

fatally depreciated, like machinery thrown out of use by 
a better invention. Only here there was no better in- 
vention." This is applying theological reasoning to nat- 
ural phenomena. The same argument will apply to what 
seems to be Dr. Mackintosh's belief, that of a flood, in 
place of a glacial epoch. Either an ice age or a uni- 
versal flood "involved the forfeiture of past progress." 
If the argument is a sufficient refutation of the theory 
of natural selection it is also fatal to the theory of a 
Divine Providence, as an Allwise Ruler. The glacial 
epoch could not be interpreted as a "forfeiture of past 
progress." Nature makes no mistakes. Whatever oc- 
curs naturally is not only right when interpreted cosmi- 
cally, but is undoubtedly the best for the welfare of man 
himself. The ice age was the result of natural condi- 
tions, which if not resulting in covering part of the earth 
with ice would have perhaps resulted in something yet 
more destructive. It seems to have resulted in leaving 
a large part of the globe passed over in a condition of 
made soil, which man took advantage of in adopting 
agriculture as a pursuit and means of sustenance. It 
left the surface better adapted to the evolution of a more 
highly organized man. The proper question is which 
theory — evolution or the theological — the better inter- 
prets the natural well known facts and involves the least 
inconsistency. 

Progress as conceived in the human brain does not 
express the cosmic process. Man in himself has made 
what we term progress. He has evolved from a lower 
order to what w T e deem a higher one. That is as changes 
occurred in the form, the temperature, the solidity of 
the earth's surface, the environment to which all life on 
our globe must conform, correspondingly changed. The 
forms of life fitted to the changed conditions were the 



CHARLES R. DARWIN 65 

variations of former life best adapted to survive. Na- 
ture selected these by the method of adaptation. This 
is natural selection. While the record shows that bio- 
logically man became gradually more specialized and 
heterogeneous with an adaptation to a wider and more 
complex environment, this may be called progress. But 
some other lower forms of life, being adapted to all the 
changes for several geological epochs, did not change 
and the word progress" would not apply. The best is the 
adapted — the fit. Our ethical idea of progress toward 
what we term the angelic or Divine does not express the 
observed process of Nature. 

The word evolution, as defined by Spencer, better 
defines the actual state of facts. When a glacial epoch 
occurs that life now best fitted for its environment be- 
comes unfit and is dissipated, only the arctic forms of 
life then survive in the regions covered by the ice flow. 
On the other hand, if the earth became hotter there 
would be a corresponding change of life that man might 
think was decidedly a retrogression, instead of progres- 
sion. Or if it became too hot life would become entirely 
extinct. 

The principle is that the survival of the fittest is not 
what the theologian would call the best 1 — but it is al- 
ways the form adapted to the immediate environment. 
It is evident then that the theologically good and moral, 
that is, the human beings that have made most progress 
in obeying the decalogue and the conventionalities of 
society are not the ones whom Nature preserves in a 
crisis like that of the glacial epoch, or of an epidemic 
even of disease that occasionally afflicts mankind. How- 
ever much progress such have made, if their physical 
organisms are not adapted or fitted to the changed phys- 
ical environment their religious orthodoxy avails them 



86 PHYSICAL BASIS OF MIND AND MORALS 

not. This is a fact patent to any intelligent observer of 
the laws of nature, whether he is a believer in a personal 
providence or in the law of evolution. It also shows 
that design, as that word is applied to human affairs, is 
not adapted to the processes of Nature. In other words, 
that we have no brain centers capable of responding to 
the meaning behind the well known evolutionary phe- 
nomena. 

But it is no argument against individual and socio- 
logical progress in methods of mental development by 
education, Man's struggle for a wider and higher re- 
sponsiveness to his environment is a natural part of the 
scheme. He could not stop it if he would. 

So talented a botanist as Asa Gray, who wrote a 
book entitled, "Darwiniana," asked Darwin what would 
convince him of design. This is amazing to me. This 
question implies that Prof. Gray, having adopted the 
theory of design, desired to find facts or a line of rea- 
soning to support it. The question should have been, 
"Does a logical interpretation of all the known facts 
exclude the idea of design?" Design is compatible with 
creation, but not with evolution. If there is a designer 
back of phenomena then he is the principle and not evo- 
lution. But Prof. Gray called himself an evolutionist 
and was a great admirer of Darwin. 

IV. Honors to Him. Darwin, unconsciously to 
himself, but following where his brain best responded, 
finally achieved a real triumph, and left behind him a 
name that will never die. In this sense he is immortal. 
For, in the language of another, "Evolution, as a law of 
derivation of organic forms by descent with modifica- 
tions, is as certain as the law of gravitation." 

Darwin was seldom in the public eye. When he did 
appear at the Linnean Society, or elsewhere in public 



CHARLES R. DARWIN 67 

scientific associations, he could scarcely believe that the 
applause was meant for him. Yet no man who ever 
lived was more entitled to it. He did not start out to 
do a great thing, but did one of the greatest. 

To hear the current comments upon Darwin, in the 
theological world, one would think he was a man who 
wrote the "Origin" with a fiendish design to overthrow 
Christianity; whose hand was against every one and 
every one's hand against him. I think the forgoing 
pages will show how erroneous was this view of him. 
Yet in his life he was almost universally honored, and 
at his death was buried in Westminster Abbey. 

The list of societies that had elected him to honorary 
membership covered almost every civilized country on 
the globe. He has been mentioned by more then three 
hundred authors, in fact by nearly every scientific writer. 
He stands at the head of scientific investigators and writ- 
ers. These honors were the results, without any pre- 
conceived design, purely of patient work at Down, an 
obscure country place where he settled on a few acres 
for life in 1842. His inherited wealth gave him ample 
leisure to continuously pursue his favorite experiments 
without any interruption, the only money he ever earned 
coming from the sale of his published works. He la- 
bored and wrote in almost perfect obscurity, away from 
the eyes of men, with no thought of applause, and ap- 
parently no design other than to discover the true law 
of natural phenomena. But he found "tongues in trees, 
books in running brooks, sermons in stones, and good in 
everything." 

If great honor was heaped upon him by man, whom 
his investigations and writings seemed to have lowered, 
but in reality did not, in sociological classification, what 
would be the tribute to his genius from all animals below 



68 PHYSICAL BASIS OF MIND AND MORALS 

man if they could convey in written language their ap- 
preciation, of what he has done to raise them to a nearer 
relation to the only animal that has a written language ? 
Even the worms and barnacles, which before had small 
place in science, and the plants that he elevated in the 
scale until they seemed to move and think like animals, 
would turn toward his blessed memory, as the sunflower 
follows the sun with its admiring gaze all through the 
day. 

His ultimate standing in science was the simple result 
of following the truth wherever it led him. If the facts 
he beheld, proved to his mind any preconceived belief, 
that was already popular with men, so be it. But if they 
demonstrated a result in the opposite direction, his hon- 
est brain no more hesitated to adopt it, than he would 
hesitate to drink pure cold water when he was thirsty. 

V. Conclusion. — The question is, not whether Dar- 
win was absolutely correct in all his scientific views, or 
in all his inferences drawn from his great array of facts. 
It is probable that the wisest man although he may get 
the truth of any phenomenon never arrives at the nou- 
menon, not seeing the beginning nor the ending, it is 
probable that the most ultimate conclusion he may ar- 
rive at, has yet behind it a reality that the limited intel- 
lect of man is incapable of knowing. But the real ques- 
tion is, "What theory of Nature is most in accord with 
the phenomena, as seen by the best intellects yet devel- 
oped?" 

As far as I know, all scientists accept the theories of 
the "Indestructability of Matter" and the "Persistence of 
force;" nearly all, "The mutability of Species;" perhaps 
not all "The Uniformity of Nature." But very few of 
them are open in frankly admitting, as Darwin finally 
did, the absence of design. 



CHARTS R. DARWIN 69 

Let us hope that other peerless minds, like those of 
Corpernicus, Newton, and Darwin, will confine their 
studies and writings to natural phenomena, and thus 
bring us farther on the road to that Ultimate Reality, if 
such there is, that Spencer says seems to lie behind all 
appearances. 



CHAPTER III 

HERBERT SPENCER AND HIS MISTAKEN DISCIPLES 

Now that Herbert Spencer is dead and his autobio- 
graphy is published, his work is finished. An estimate 
can be made of the scope and real meaning of his phi- 
losophy. 

Darwin confined his efforts almost entirely to biolog- 
ical evolution. But Spencer enlarged the scope of the 
theory to apply not only to biology, but to psychology, 
sociology, and ethics, but not to the metaphysical or the- 
ological. His autobiography makes plain what was be- 
fore largely misinterpreted, namely: that he did not in- 
tend his agnosticism or his belief in the unknowable to 
be a part of his "Synthetic Philosophy." He did not 
thus escape the anathema of the formalists, nor did he 
succeed in convincing any sincere student of his work 
that he was not essentially what idealists call a phenom- 
enist. His weakness lay in his fear of the epithet "ma- 
terialist," and while his contention may be true that he 
is no more a believer in matter as a thing in itself than 
he is in spirit as a reality, yet anyone who writes scien- 
tifically upon the principles of evolution, must necessarily 
use only the evidence that comes through the senses. 
These are the phenomena of matter and motion alone. 
Whoever approaches the investigation of psychical phe- 
nomena, or consciousness, from what is called the physi- 
ological side, is called by the idealists and metaphysicians 
a materialist. It is true Spencer showed very clearly that 

70 



SPENCER AND HIS MISTAKEN DISCIPLES 71 

matter in its manifestations, the only way we cognize it, 
is as wonderful and subtle as the pretended manifesta- 
tions of so-called spirit, yet this did not protect him from 
the scorn and vituperation of those who would not have 
it that way. His autobiography makes plain also why 
he did not include inorganic evolution in his philosophy. 
His physical strength was not equal to the required ad- 
ditional labor. 

Spencer in speaking of his work called "First Prin- 
ciples" says, "My surprise was considerable on finding 
that in most cases" (referring to notices and reviews of 
the work), "the important part of the book was ignored, 
and that such notice as was taken, was taken of the part 
which I regarded as relatively unimportant." * 

"I saw it would be needful to preface the exposition" 
(system of philosophy) "by some chapters setting forth 
my beliefs on ultimate questions, metaphysical and the- 
ological; since, otherwise, I should be charged with pro- 
pounding a purely materialistic interpretation of things. 
Hence resulted the first division 'The Unknowable.' 

"To me it seemed manifest that the essential part of 
the book— the doctrine of evolution — may be held with- 
out affirming any metaphysical, or theological beliefs". . 
"such attention as was given" (by reviewers) "was in 
nearly all cases given to the agnostic view, which I set 
forth as preliminary." ** 

He further says that those who undertake to guide 
public opinion laid more stress upon the preliminary 
metaphysical part, than upon the real system of philoso- 
phy, the "law of transformation, everywhere unceasingly 
displayed by existences of all orders." 



* Autobiography, 2d Vol., p. 85. 
** Autobiography, 2d Vol., p. 86. 



72 PHYSICAL BASIS OF MIND AND MORALS 

I regard the first part of "First Principles," "The 
Unknowable," as weakening the force of the Synthetic 
Philosophy. Evidently Spencer having therein to his own 
satisfaction proved that whatever may be behind the ap- 
parent cannot be recognized by the human intellect, in- 
tended to dismiss the subject from his own mind. But 
not so the great majority of his disciples. They dismiss 
from their minds, not the metaphysical unknowable, but 
the knowable principle of material evolution and con- 
tinue to worship in place of the anthropomorphic Hebrew 
God — what Spencer means by the general term of the 
"persistency of force, or the Unknowable." No man can 
worship the unknowable. What is unknowable does not 
exist for the human senses. Therefore the moment a 
religion is attempted to be organized upon that idea, it 
at once recrystalizes into the former anthropomorphic 
theology. 

Mr. Spencer himself has also given considerable oc- 
casion for the effect of which he complains by frequently 
referring in different parts of his "Synthetic Philosophy" 
to certain phenomena as manifestations of this Unknow- 
able Absolute and thus making it to that extent really a 
part of his exposition. In other words he frequently 
treats the Unknowable as knowable. 

When the work began to appear his neglect in Eng- 
land by the most of the so-called educated classes was 
contemptuous, ostentatious and largely after the manner 
in which James Ward treats him in his "Naturalism and 
Agnosticism." But he received somewhat better treat- 
ment in the United States, largely through the efforts of 
his scientific and personal friend, Prof. E. L. Youmans, 
the writer of the article on "Evolution" in the American 
Encyclopedia. The "Synthetic Philosophy" has been ex- 
tensively read in the scientific world. It can be well said 



SPENCER AND HIS MISTAKEN DISCIPLES 73 

that the general ideas of it have firmly established them- 
selves in the intellects of the intelligent among even his 
opponents. Very few now speak outright against the 
general principle that all things have been evolved and 
the terms used by Spencer to describe the operations of 
evolution have become so incorporated into the ordinary 
language used by thinkers, that they are frequently used 
in the pulpit. In fact, now is a time of reconciliation of 
evolution with special creation as evidenced by Dr. Ly- 
man Abbott's "Evolution of a Theologian." He says that 
evolution is God's way of doing things. * 

But Moses did not put it just this way in "Genesis;" 
neither did Darwin, La Marck, nor Spencer, treat the 
doctrine from that point of view. B'ut Spencer's unfor- 
tunate first part on the Unknowable as the assumed 
power behind phenomena is responsible for a large num- 
ber of evolutionists who keep up the connection in a 
much more anthropomorphic way, who actually continue 
to repeat the words of Spencer that such power is even 
"welling up in consciousness." This assertion means 
that an Unknowable Absolute is known. The ablest, as 
well as one of the first in time, of this school of theo- 
logical evolutionists was John Fiske. His "Outlines of 
Cosmic Philosophy" is practically an exposition of evo- 
lution along the lines treated by Herbert Spencer in his 
"Synthetic Philosophy." He also indorses Darwin's 
theory of natural selection. • Fiske, of course, saw clearly 
how incompatible the theory of evolution is with design, 
and especially with the anthropomorphism of current 
theology. He seemed worried over it and devoted many 
chapters to a reconcilliation of evolution and its corrol- 



* Since writing the above Dr. Abbott has declared his unbelief 
in a personal God. 



74 FHYSICAI, BASIS OF MIND AND MORALS 

laries to the" "religious spirit" of the people. It is signifi- 
cant that the treatise was first given in lectures at Har- 
vard College. 

He is true therein to the teachings of science that 
matter and motion are the only perceptible elements of 
evolution. Their constant interchange is done by the 
method of evolution. But in order to preserve the basis 
of the "religious sentiment," he assumes, as does Spen- 
cer, that these phenomena are the manifestations of an 
unknowable power, whose form or substance cannot be 
defined, but who takes the place of the anthropomorphic 
God heretofore creating and ruling the creations, in the 
beliefs of the people. But he lays very much more stress 
upon this than Spencer did. How can we treat of or 
with the unknowable except through its manifestations? 
That is, a line of human action or a code of life must 
be evolved from what we know, not from the unknow- 
able. This is science, and on this Spencer really founds 
his philosophy, and his code of ethics consists of man's 
correspondence with the knowable objective environ- 
ment. Fiske really does the same thing. But in order 
not to be called an atheist, or a materialist, he discredits 
Comte, Haeckel, Buchner, and all those, including Mole- 
schott and Vogt, who insist on the same natural moral 
code, but who also refuse to treat the unknowable as 
knowable. They refuse to consider it as an element in 
man's intercourse and correspondence with phenomena. 
Man cannot propitiate an unknowable power. It is un- 
changeable, if its asserted manifestations of persistence 
of force mean anything. Man has nothing to fear from 
unchangeable phenomena and nothing to hope except 
that he may keep a proper correspondence with them. 
Science and good hard sense both teach man that what 
he needs for the improvement of his condition is knowl- 



SPENCER AND HIS MISTAKEN DISCIPEES 75 

edge of phenomena by which he can avoid those mani- 
festations detrimental to his being and further properly 
adjust his life, his whole organism, to the so-called laws 
of Nature. The change of form called death is one of 
the essential phenomena. If so, man will come to accept 
it as such and not dread it as he does now. He will post- 
pone it as long as possible. A God to be worshiped must 
be knowable and hence anthropomorphic. This means 
that he is part of phenomena. Worship, however, of a 
phenomenon is a paradox. 

The so-called religious sentiment, that is also called 
spirituality and various other names, is the outgrowth of 
the limited knowledge of natural phenomena, or natural 
cause and effect, always characteristic of the mass of the 
people. This tendency toward supernaturalism is a na- 
tural evolution, in equilibration with the slow co-evolu- 
tion of brain, and is a phase of the perpetual readjust- 
ment of the organism with its environment. This read- 
justment is going on now and will continue as long as 
organic life exists. The worshiper of the Hebrew God 
of the Bible is consistent with this. He clothes him with 
knowable attributes. He personifies him in a spiritual 
sense and appeals to him in prayer. At the same time 
he must know that natural phenomena are persistent and 
unchangeable. Eventually such subjective condition will 
merge into scientific and the evolved brain will co-or- 
dinate its functions with objective phenomena from 
which it will derive the essential code of conduct it is 
now seeking from behind the phenomena. Until then 
theology will continue in some form, and ought to con- 
tinue as the only possible condition to imperfect corre- 
spondence. This is Fiske's philosophy when he really 
ceases to idealize, when he gets far enough away from 
his strong cohesion with metaphysics and theology. Any 



76 PHYSICAL BASIS OF MIND AND MORALS 

scientific thinker who confines his reasoning to the in- 
ductive method has nothing to say of the unknowable. 
Darwin never alludes to it. There is nothing in the re- 
quirements of philosophy, much less in science, nothing 
in ethics or sociology, in short, nothing hi the real wel- 
fare of the organic world including man, that necessi- 
tates considering an "unknowable absolute." 

The position is taken by some writers upon the his- 
torical facts of psychology, that because mankind seem 
to have always thought in certain channels there- 
fore there must be some truth in the beliefs thus arising. 
But this presupposes that the validity of the truth lies 
in the conceptions or generalizations of the average 
human brain. The history of human advancement, the 
changes of belief from age to age, the establishment of 
the fallacy of the Ptolemaic astrology, the various steps 
by which science has overthrown preconceived concep- 
tions in physics, chemistry, biology, and psychology are 
sufficient refutations of this position. The real fact is 
that mankind have been controlled by delusions from the 
beginning. 

It is also true that the only criterion of truth is the 
scientific inductions of the best brain — i. e. those brains 
best adapted to the investigations of phenomena. Of 
course these brains fail to reach the ultimate truth. Yet 
their conclusions are the only reliance of man. We must 
rest satisfied with conceptions far short of what we can 
dimly perceive may lie beyond the limitations of human 
intellect. 

Fiske distinctly says that the molecular, or chemical 
process of nerve tissue in the organism does not produce 
thought. His expression is that molecular motion ac- 
companies the thought; that physical pulsation and the 
psychical explosion are parallel. Spencer says that of the 



SrENCER AND HIS MISTAKEN DISCIPLES 79 

two supposable phenomena of the conversion of thought 
or idea into matter and motion, or the transmission oi 
matter and motion into thought or idea, he would prefer 
to believe the latter, but is doubtful. If the thought, or 
what Fiske calls the psychical explosion is always ac- 
companied by the nervous shock or motion, but is not 
produced thereby, what is it produced by? Fiske does 
not tell us. 

It would be competent for Fiske as a philosopher, or 
for Spencer, to speculate on this connection, if it must be 
called that, between the psychical and molecular motion. 
William Wundt, who confines his exposition to the 
strictly scientific, and seldom steps beyond the bounds of 
science to that of philosophy or metaphysics, says scien- 
tifically as follows : 

"It would fall within the scope of physiology only if 
we could interpret the psychical processes themselves as 
molecular processes, i. e. in the last resort as modes of 
motion or as physical energies. This, however, we can- 
not do, the attempt fails at once under whatever guise it 
may be made. Psychical processes refuse to submit to 
any one of the physical measures of energy, and the 
physical molecular processes so far as we are able to fol- 
low them are seen to be transformed variously enough 
into one another, but never directly into psychical quali- 
ties." He means by this that the method of transform- 
ing sensations into ideas and concepts is not perceptible 
to the senses of self, nor is it observable in the brains of 
others. I have commented on this in some of the pre- 
ceding pages. 

"In saying this we do not of course reject the idea 
that psychical processes may be regularly attended by an 
interchange of physical forces, which as such form a 
proper object of a co-ordinate investigation by the molec- 



78 PHYSICAL BASIS OF MIND AND MORALS 

ular mechanics of the nervous system; nor do we deny 
what would naturally follow that psychical symptoms 
may be taken as indicative of definite physiological mo- 
lecular processes, and that they in their turn, if it ever 
happens that we know more about them, may be taken 
under certain circumstances as indicative of psychical 
conditions. But such a relation between the two depart- 
ments is entirely compatible with their separate inde- 
pendence, with the impossibility at any time or by any 
means of the reduction of the one to the other." * 

I do 1 not think he is justified in making this latter as- 
sertion. It does not follow from the statement of facts, 
because "separate independence" of the psychical from 
the physical cannot be proved and has never existed. He 
wrote the above after he had previously been forced to 
acknowledge the unity of all phenomena in a physical 
basis, as follows: 

"If physiology is obliged by the uniformity of physi- 
cal action throughout the universe to accept the postul- 
ate that the processes of life have their ultimate basis in 
the general properties of matter, psychology finds it no 
less obligatory to assume in the same matter the univer- 
sal substrate of natural phenomena the presence of con- 
ditions which attain to expression as the psychical aspect 
of vital phenomena. But this latter statement must not 
mislead us. The latent life of inorganic matter must not 
be confused, as hylozoism confuses it, with real life and 
actual consciousness nor must it be considered with ma- 
terialism as a function of matter." 

If the process of formation of ideas (cognition) is 
unknown beyond the physiology of nervous structure 
and psychologists refuse or fail to connect the psychical 



* Principles of Physiological Psychology. Vol. I, p. 102. 



SPENCER AND HIS MISTAKEN DISCIPLES 79 

with the material, then what advance has been made 
since Descartes' time in attributing all thinking to a soul 
entity. If the psychical cannot be attributed by so pro- 
found a thinker and writer as Wundt to either a natural 
or a supernatural cause, then it is agnostic. 

The immediate results of the molecular motion in the 
brain tissue by psychical phenomena and the immediate 
preceding material accompaniments of it are recogniz- 
able, but the connecting process is an unknown thing. 
The individual cannot feel it in himself nor perceive it 
in another any more than in himself. I presume Wundt 
never can find a measurable test scientifically of the 
purely psychical phenomenon, such as he found in the 
muscular contraction resulting from an external sensa- 
tion on pages 67 to 75 of the same volume from which 
the above extracts are taken. But while the evidence 
cannot be thus reduced to the same scientific basis as 
mechanical motion, yet philosophy steps in and must 
pronounce that such constant connections between such 
molecular mechanics of the nervous structure and the 
psychical phenomena of the organism, made up so larg- 
ely of such structure, appear to be causal ones. While 
this causal connection eludes the present scientific meth- 
ods, as does also so many physical phenomena, e. g., the 
attraction of gravitation, there is no other natural cause 
yet suggested to account for it. Wundt, of course, does 
not suggest a supernatural cause, nor in fact any other in 
the first volume of his "Physiological Psychology," so 
far as I have read him. As a scientific investigator it is 
not his province to step outside of the methods of sci- 
ence to reinforce what his actual beliefs may be. Sci- 
ence has no beliefs. Its province is measurable demon- 
stration through the senses. Spencer recognizes only 
matter and motion. As yet science has discovered no- 



80 PHYSICAL BASIS OF MIND AND MORALS 

thing in phenomena but matter and motion, or perhaps 
motion alone in the form of centers of energy. Vital 
function is psychical phenomena. 

If the brain is simply a bundle of nerves to convey 
spirit, as copper wire carries electricity, then science 
should turn its attention to the study of spirit as it does 
to radio-activity, but when it undertakes to do that it 
finds absolutely a blank. It is not unthinkable that mat- 
ter and motion in the form of mobile nervous ganglia 
can directly produce the common thought of mankind 
when we see them in other combinations and relations 
produce tints of changing sunset, the rainbow, the solar 
spectrum, chemical attraction, the attraction of gravita- 
tion, and the evolution of all forms. These are objective 
phenomena that existed prior to any known psychical 
phenomena. Their connection with their real causes are 
as obscure as are mental phenomena with their real 
causes. They are all the results of particular combina- 
tions and phases of matter and motion and our senses 
never perceive them except in these combinations. 
Thought is simply the kaleidoscopic reproduction of 
these things by presentations through the physical nerv- 
ous structure. The mind is a spectrum of objective 
phenomena produced by sensations coming through the 
eyes, ears, nose, skin, and mouth and what is called self 
feeling or the kinaesthetic. There can be nothing in all 
phenomena then, but what matter and motion, in the form 
of persistence of force produces. Feeling is the observa- 
tion of the effect by the organism. This is consciousness 
or awareness, or a still better definition of consciousness 
is that it is a relation between certain objects, the number 
being limited by the capacity for impression of the neural 
structure. 

These observations on the probable nature of psy- 



SPENCER AND HIS MISTAKEN DISCIPLES 81 

chical processes may be stated in a further modified form 
as follows : 

It may be as stated by Wundt that states of consci- 
ousness cannot be transformed directly into forms of 
molecular, or mechanical motion, nor the latter induct- 
ively traced as causing the former, by any measurable 
method, such as is applied to the transforming of heat 
into mechanical motion. At the same time he recog- 
nizes the inseperable simultaneous or serial connection 
of the two states, if not as cause and effect, yet as ante- 
cedent and subsequent facts, by devoting the first volume 
of his "Principles of Physiological Psychology" to the 
anatomy and physiology of the nervous structure as the 
substrate of consciousness. Having measured the ef- 
fects the nerve substance transmits to the muscles of the 
body, he says, "Now we have no right to suppose that 
the laws which govern the transference of nervous mo- 
lecular processes to the contractile substance, are at all 
different from the laws which regulate their transmission 
to other substances, whose properties show them to be 
related to the nervous elements — more especially there- 
fore to the substances that are of peculiar import for the 
psychical aspect of vital phenomena, the elements of the 
sense organs. Now the processes thus analyzed remain al- 
ways physical and chemical processes. It is never possible 
to arrive by way of a molecular mechanics at any sort 
of psychical quality or process." * But the muscular 
movements and the "changes set up by the action of 
stimulus in the sensory cells" are the psychical processes. 
The changes set up by the stimulation of the sense or- 
gans, by the energy of the environment, e. g. light, heat, 
resistance, — by the manifestations of cosmic energy in 
the multitude of effects in the perpetual apparition are 

*P. 101. 



y2 PHYSICAL BASIS OF MIND AND MORALS 

as Wundt says, physical and chemical — but they are also 
the psychical — judgment, memory, and the emotions be- 
ing some of the changes thus set up. 

On page 321, Vol. I, "Principles of Physiological 
Psychology" he says, "The simplest psychical contents 
discoverable by analysis of the facts of consciousness al- 
ways presupposes as their physiological substrate com- 
plex nerve processes, the result of the co-operation of 
many elementary parts. No psychical process can be 
imagined, however simple it may be, which does not re- 
quire for its origination a large number of functionally 
connected elementary parts." Now, if the psychical 
quality of which he speaks in a previous citation, is 
something independent of molecular or physical process, 
then what does the above language mean? I am not 
able to perceive the independence and must maintain 
the unity of the physiological and psychical. 

Of course, it cannot be contended that any special 
form of substance can produce per se, any mechanical 
effect, e. g. the attraction of gravitation. But it can be 
contended, on general principles, that all phenomena, 
physical or psychical are most probably produced by a 
natural force called cosmic energy, or the presistence of 
force, the real nature of which is incomprehensible. The 
peculiar phenomena called vital and that vital phenom- 
ena called psychical cannot be separated from the men- 
tal conception of the universal postulate. They are 
therefore natural and governed by natural laws only. 
The mind, or consciousness of man, is impossible with- 
out the neural structure always accompanying it and the 
neural structure without its function, or without its 
genetic correspondence with cosmic energy, in other 
words, without its excitation by the objective, is nothing 
more than any other functionless matter. 



SPENCER AND HIS MISTAKEN DISCIPEES 83 

I agree with Fiske that whatever in Christianity is 
essential to the building of individual character, ought 
to be and will be preserved. This is found on its ethical 
side. The present decalogue will remain the moral code, 
except a change of permanence can come with a change 
of intellectual conception of a natural character building 
code of conduct, more efficient and that efficiency per- 
ceived by mankind. His idea is that the idea of Deity 
must not be given up, but it must be a deanthropomor- 
phized Deity. Deanthropomorphization means the fad- 
ing away of the personal idea entirely. The Persistence 
of Force is a deanthropomorphized Deity. 

Fiske says that Comte's and Buckle's theories of civ- 
ilization failed because they failed to consider the his- 
torical fact that peoples always have thought theologic- 
ally and that evolution teaches that this kind of thinking 
is natural under the conditions surrounding it; that it 
cannot be changed suddenly by science and philosophy 
both of which omit or ignore Deity. It can be replaced 
only slowly by other thinking along scientific lines by 
the method of intellectual evolution. This is so, but it 
does not affect the truth of Comte and Buckle. They 
were well aware of this historical fact, but were better 
aware of the delusions connected therewith. Fiske's — 
An Absolute Unknowable — is just as opposite to this 
historical theology as that of Comte and Buckle because 
the personal element is absent. The inconsistency of 
Fiske in his "Outlines of Cosmic Philosophy" consist 
partly of the manner in which he first knocks down an- 
thropomorphic theism and then sets up the Unknowable 
Absolute as an object to satisfy men's religious spirit. * 



* Chapter 2, part 3. 
Chapter 3, part 3. 



84 PHYSICAL BASIS OF MIND AND MORALS 

The error consists in supposing that the latter as an ob- 
ject of worship is any less anthropomorphic than the for- 
mer, except in name. The worship of an unknowable 
does not satisfy any supposed natural inclination of his- 
torical worship, the principle of which Fiske was so 
fearful of violating, as he asserts Comte and Buckle had 
done. 

But what Comte and Buckle did ignore was not the 
historical fact that mankind have believed in the super- 
natural, but the truth of anthropomorphic theism, and it 
is what Fiske has really ignored. Comte recognized that 
there might be an Unknowable Absolute, but seemed to 
know that it could not take the place of anthropomorphic 
theism in the brains of the people. Fiske's formula is 
this : "There exists a power to which no limit in time 
or space is conceivable, of which all phenomena as pre- 
sented in consciousness are manifestations, but which we 
can know only through these manifestations." My state- 
ment would be, "The phenomena that come to us through 
our senses are known to us and thereori we can base our 
lives and thoughts. Whatever may be beyond is the 
unknowable about which we cannot postulate anything." 

Fiske's formula errs, as did Spencer's in stating that 
we can know the Unknowable through its manifestations. 
The only way we know the knowable is by manifesta- 
tions. We perceive the manifestations, but not the final 
cause of them. If we can know the Unknowable the 
same way, then there is no difference to us between the 
Unknowable and the knowable, which is a paradox. 

The Breadth of Herbert Spencer's Teaching. — 
There is an article in the Cosmopolitan for February, 
1904, by Logan C. McPherson, another disciple 
of Spencer's entitled, "The Breadth of Herbert 
Spencer's Teaching." I take exception to his assertion 



SPENCER AND HIS MISTAKEN DISCIPLES 85 

therein that Spencer "has shown the design that all the 
threads of existence are weaving." Spencer did not un- 
dertake to penetrate the design, if any, lying behind phe- 
nomena. He could not do so, because he says himself, 
it is the Unknowable. He inferred there might be an 
Unknowable Absolute, but did not penetrate the design. 
If there is any design in the phenomena of the universe, 
it is not perceptible to man, because that means either 
the knowing the beginning and the end, which Spencer 
specifically disclaims, or it means that the Unknowable 
has communicated that design in the manifestations 
themselves. But who can tell from the manifestations, 
the object or ultimate meaning of the perpetual appari- 
tion? Mr. McPherson also states in the article, "The 
Synthetic Philosophy formulated by Herbert Spencer 
attempts within the limits of human cognizance to ex- 
plain why the suns and stars have formed ; why there 
is life; why the brain has developed ;" etc. etc. This 
assertion is the same in effect as the design above 
mentioned. "Why," means the object in view, or the 
reason leading to the phenomena. Evolution means 
process only, and not why. The word Mr. McPherson 
should have used is "how" not "why." He himself seems 
to recognize this toward the close of the article, in which 
he says, "In defining the boundary between the realm of 
the knowable and the realm of the Unknowable, Mr. 
Spencer ascertains the limit beyond which the inquiry 
of science is and must forever be without avail, that 
limit beyond which lies and must forever lie, the sphere 
of religion." He divorces religion from the knowable 
and from any connection with the phenomena which are 
the source of all knowledge, and relegates it to a region 
bare of facts where, man must grope forever in darkness 
and ignorance. I hardly think any intelligent man will 



86 PHYSICAL BASIS OF MIND AND MORALS 

care to spend a moment's time of his short life in such 
a fruitless realm, when he might formulate an altruistic 
and ethical code within the known realm. 

It is well to repeat that man knows only what comes 
through his own senses together with what instincts he 
has inherited by virtue of nerve structure from his long 
line of ancestors; that is, his intelligence is his corre- 
spondence with objective environment. But it is not nec- 
essary to separate his religion from his intelligence. His 
religion to be of most utility to him, should be based on 
knowledge of phenomena. He will either do as he has 
always done — set up a subjective Deity that he thinks is 
knowable to him, but which in reality is not, or regulate 
his life by known phenomena and his relations with them. 
This is phenomenon. Man's so-called mentality is a 
unit. He has not a scientific side and a religious side. 
One part of his mentality cannot exist in an unknow- 
able realm. It is all in the realm of the knowable. 
Whatever he does from day to day must have the ap- 
proval of his intellect. That approval cannot be given 
to his worship of an unknowable. He now clothes the 
Hebrew God with human attributes, in order to make 
him knowable, writes a book, calls it God's book, as 
a guide to his life, and in every way makes him a per- 
sonal, knowable entity. All this meets with the approval 
of what intelligence he has. Now, when his intellect 
becomes so enlightened by scientific investigation as tq 
make a Herbert Spencer of him, he perceives that the 
Hebrew God is incompatible with objective phenomena. 
He then writes a Synthetic Philosophy to take the place 
of the former delusion and bases his code of ethics on 
phenomena as Spencer does, and relegates theology to 
faith in the unknowable. Mr. McPherson says, "Mr. 
Spencer's utterance here is abundant proof that he is not 



SPENCER AND HIS MISTAKEN DISCIPLES 87 

a materialist; that in the depth of religious instinct, in 
the profundity of religious emotion, he yields neither to 
seer nor to mystic, to no apostle of any faith." 

Mr. Spencer says himself, that he wrote his philoso- 
phy to take the place, in the minds of those who could 
comprehend him, of former theological conceptions that 
are rapidly fading away. I think Mr. Spencer would 
be surprised to be compared in his "profundity of reli- 
gious emotion" with seers, mystics and apostles; or to 
be held as altogether admirable because of any supposed 
parallelism between his views and methods and. theirs. 
If his Synthetic Philosophy means anything, it is the 
supplanting of the religious emotion of seer, mystic and 
apostle of faith. I wonder if it were not grim humor 
in him to relegate all such to that unknowable realm 
which he claims to have discovered, where their pro- 
fundity of religious emotion would have free course, 
and leave the knowable' realm to science and scientific 
religion. Undoubtedly Spencer in his autobiography, 
when complaining of the misapprehension by his di- 
sciples of his real philosophy, was referring to such as 
Fiske and McPherson. Hence my dwelling so long on 
their writings. I think that Spencerism means natural 
phenomenism and not supernaturalism. 

There is an analogy between Spencer, the synthetic 
philosopher, and Shakespeare, the greatest poet and 
dramatist, in that both are persistent in holding the mir- 
ror up to Nature, and also in never scolding the status 
quo, but in having infinite charity for those who are al- 
ways the creatures of imagination. Everything, how- 
ever disgusting to civilized and refined eyes, is ac- 
counted for by Spencer as the natural effects of evolu- 
tion; while Shakespeare tells in his incomparable man- 



88 PHYSICAL BASIS OF MIND AND MORALS 

ner the exact truth of every situation and gives the lan- 
guage of the character, not his own. 

Darwin said of Spencer that perhaps he was the 
greatest philosopher that England had produced. He 
certainly possessed intellect of a very high order. He 
was a voluminous author of scientific and philosophical 
works of the most abstruse character. His accuracy of 
expression was such that in many instances he was com- 
pelled to invent his own terminology in order to express 
the fine shades of meaning. His great fame will rest 
on his "Synthetic Philosophy" in which he lays the basis 
of correct reasoning in the second part of his first volume 
which he entitled "First Principles." The first part of 
it is a very ingenious and profound exposition of the rel- 
ativity of all knowledge. But its ensemble consists of 
what is more popularly called agnosticism. He pretends 
to reconcile religion, or theology and science, but says 
in his autobiography that this first part is no part of his 
philosophy. 

It is certainly apparent now to all thoughtful readers 
of the whole work that it would have been better had it 
begun with the second part of "First Principles," in 
which he discusses the general principles of evolution 
and evolves from the reasoning a comprehensive defini- 
tion for both evolution and life. The technical treatment 
of the subject in process and method is then divided into 
its usual scientific branches, viz. into biology, psychology, 
sociology, and ethics. This, of course is an artificial 
division for the benefit of the human brain in its anal- 
ysis and study of the natural processes constantly and 
simultaneously operating as practically a unit in both 
the objective and subjective cosmos. In other words 
phenomena as apparent to the human senses everywhere 
are simply different phases of the same process, viz. the 



SPENCER AND HIS MISTAKEN DISCIPLES 89 

interchange of matter and motion. In reality matter and 
motion may only be two phases of the same thing. The 
atom may be an integration of millions of ions, whose 
ultimate unit is an electrical discharge, the one element 
of Faraday with two polarities. Therefore the "Syn- 
thetic Philosophy" is monistic. 

Suffice it to say that Spencer's treatment of all these 
subjects is at once profound and exhaustive. He be- 
gins with the basis of the whole, in the physical evolu- 
tion of biological forms, and ends with what now seems 
to be the crowning function of structure, the most ab- 
stract and beautiful altruism. 

His "Synthetic Philosophy" is epoch making. No 
writer after him, who follows in his footsteps and in the 
same method, so far as I have read, is so convincing and 
so exhaustive. Notwithstanding an occasional lapse into 
the mazes of the Unknowable power, "welling up in con- 
sciousness" and his disposition to minimize the efficiency 
of natural selection as a theory of evolution, he stands 
as the great philosopher of natural cause and effect. 
Spencer says himself in his autobiography that he failed 
to grasp the method of evolution as Darwin did. He has 
written a work that will give his name a deathless fame 
and will do as much as any other scientific treatise, to 
educate the masses of mankind out of false conceptions 
and into true ones. 

I think Darwin is the great discoverer of the method 
of organic evolution and Spencer the greatest exponent 
of its universality. In my judgment these two are now 
exerting the widest influence in turning the thought of 
the world into scientific and therefore natural channels. 
Hence I follow the first chapter of this volume, "A 
Short Outline of the Principle of Evolution," with ob- 



90 PHYSICAL BASIS OF MIND AND MORALS 

servations on these great expounders of its phenomena. 
Every one who would like to study the evidences of 
natural evolution, which I think is the basis of correct 
reasoning, should read the works of these profound 
thinkers. 



CHAPTER IV 

THE RHYTHM OF MOTION 

Rhythm in the Stellar Bodies. — It is easy for one 
familiar with uranography to determine the hour of 
the night or the month of the year by the constel- 
lations that come in view at any point, for example, 
the zenith, in regular order from dark to dawn. The 
apparent motion of the fixed stars is about one degree 
each night from east to west, making the entire circuit 
of the imaginary concave vault in a year. 

The day and the month can also be told as accurately 
by noting the point on the western horizon of the ap- 
parent setting of the sun. I have often seen it disappear 
below the south end of the Cheyenne range of the Rocky 
Mountains' in almost exact line with the steeple of a cer- 
tain church, frequently as red as blood, reminding one of 
Emile Breton's painting called "St. Agnes' Eve." This 
point is 23% degrees north of the plane of the earth's 
equator, and the date, of course, is June 21st. It then 
slowly moves south day by day, until on the 21st day of 
September, it sets directly in the west on an extension of 
an east and west line, looking just before it dsappears, 
like the headlight of a great locomotive, coming from 
the west to the east. It does not stop here a moment. 
It never stops. It keeps on south until, on the 21st day 
of December, viewed from Pueblo, Colorado, it goes 
down behind the high point of the Greenhorn range of 
the same mountains, just south of the Hardscrabble Gap, 
and 23% degrees south of the equator. 

91 



92 PHYSICAL BASIS OF MIND AND MORALS 

It then turns again north, setting each day in exactly 
the same spot it did one year before, completing the 
round trip from the northern point and back again in 
365% days. The rising of the sun is analagous with this 
description of its setting. All this is an optical illusion. 

This apparent rhythmic motion of the sun and stars 
tells with unerring language to astronomers, since the 
time of Copernicus, the real motion of the earth on its 
axis daily, and its free rapid movement in a spiral rhythm 
in its orbit through space, marking for us the artificial 
divisions of time. Time therefore is a measure of space 
and we are only conscious of it by the alternations of 
night and day or other rhythms. The spiral motion of 
the earth in its orbit is apparent to the observer of the 
difference in the angle of the axis of such a constellation 
as Orion, for instance, to the plane of the horizon, be- 
tween its apparent rising and setting. In addition to 
these two motions, the earth has nine other — the third 
one being the precession of the equinoxes. Fourth, 
revolution around a common center of gravity of the 
earth and moon. Fifth, what is called nutation. Sixth, 
variation in the obliquity of the ecliptic. Seventh, vari- 
ation of eccentricity. Dr. Croll and Prof. James Geikie 
account for the probable recurrence of the Glacial Pe- 
riod by the change of the eccentricity of the earth's orbit, 
together with the precession of the equinoxes and ap- 
sides, the periods being perhaps 10500 years. Our 
winters are now very gradually getting colder. Eighth, 
the line of apsides. Ninth, perturbations. Tenth, the 
motion caused by a displacement of the sun's center, 
when all the planets, except the earth, are on one side 
of the sun. Eleventh, the movement of the solar system 
as a whole toward a point in the constellation of Her- 
cules. 



the; rhythm of motion 93 

Phenomena on our Planet. — The astronomer Flam- 
marion says, "Our planet is alive with a certain stellar 
life which we cannot understand. Magnetic currents 
circulate in it incessantly. The intensity and direction 
of these currents vary day by day, year by year, century 
by century. In 1666 the compass, as observed in Paris, 
pointed exactly to the north — after that it turned toward 
the west. The deviation was eight degrees in 1700, sev- 
enteen degrees in 1750, twenty-two degrees in 1800. It 
further increased one-half up to 1814, when it com- 
menced to return toward the north. The deviation was 
twenty-two degrees in 1835, twenty degrees in 1854, 
nineteen degrees in 1863, eighteen degrees in 1870, sev- 
enteen degrees in 1878, fifteen and one-half degrees in 
1893. It still continues to decrease and it is probable 
that it will point again to the north about 1962." 

This coming back of the needle to a point it once oc- 
cupied is rhythm. If it make such change once, it will 
again. 

In addition to the above he notes a daily and yearly 
variation of the needle, which appears to correspond 
with the number of spots visible on the sun; also, that 
"the magnetic needle enclosed in a cellar of the Paris 
Observatory, follows the aurora borealis, which, lights its 
aerial fires in Sweden and Norway." It has been dis- 
covered in the last half of the 19th century, that every 
eleven years, the sun spots wax and wane. This perio- 
dicity affects not only the electric currents of the earth, 
but many other phenomena, such as the rainfall, and re- 
sulting scarcity or abundance of food products. All this 
is rhythmical. 

A tourist can sit on the front porch of the Fire Hole 
Hotel in the Yellowstone National Park, and watch the 



94 PHYSICAL BASIS OF MIND AND MORALS 

geyser called "Old Faithful" spout hot water 125 feet 
high, every sixty-five minutes. When the water has sub- 
sided, he can wander away to see the exquisite tints of 
the Rainbow Lake, or the beautiful purple of the Morn- 
ing Glory geyser, so named because of its perfect resem- 
blance, in the shape of its opening and color of its 
sloping funnel-shaped sides, to that flower. By looking 
occasionally at his watch he can so time his return to 
the hotel as to arrive in just sixty-five minutes from 
the last explosion, and be sure he will see another, be- 
cause "Old Faithful" is true to its name. In fact the 
flow of all the geysers is rhythmical. The visitor and 
his convenyance in the regular rounds through the Na- 
tional Park, thread along the upper waters of the Yel- 
lowstone River. Like all rivers, its flow is in a winding 
curve first to one side, then to another, along sloping 
banks covered with verdure until it comes to the first 
falls, where is pours over a declivity and soon after over 
a much higher one with a deep toned murmur into a 
canon whose sides are high and gorgeously tinted with 
several shades of yellow, variegated here and there with 
deep reds and olive greens. The prevailing color of this 
most beautiful of all canons gives the name to the river. 
All this is rhythmical. 

The traveler leaves the park and goes to the Pacific 
coast. 

He sees the contour of the earth as it! appears, every- 
where the eye rests on its surface, in a succession of 
swelling hills, mountains and valleys, covered with ver- 
dure that sways to successive breezes, watered by peri- 
odical rains and bathed in the sunshine of day, followed 
by the' shadow of night. He sees the water of the ocean 
in rhythmic play upon the shore, not only by successive 
waves produced by the wind, but in the swelling tides 



THE RHYTHM OF MOTION 95 

that regularly follow their flow, as faultlessly as day fol- 
lows night, by the diurnal revolution of our globe. 

As he sails away to the north to visit the Alaskan 
coast and the Muir Glacier, he follows the windings of 
the shore among islands of all shapes, except the rec- 
tilinear, for nowhere does he see a straight line. Every- 
thing is rhythmical, everywhere is the line of beauty ; no 
shore without its motion of musical waters; no space 
without its lights and shadows, that follow each other 
in rhythmical motion. This description of one part of 
the surface of the earth is merely typical of the whole. 

It is the same in the social affairs of men. History 
teaches that nations rise and fall with great regularity; 
that peoples flourish for a time, then pass away and are 
followed by others, who are governed by the same rhyth- 
mic law. For example, the red man of the Western Con- 
tinent is rapidly passing away, by contact with the 
stronger and more coherent civilization of the Indo-Ger- 
manic race, that had previously produced the same re- 
sult in the European half of the Eastern Continent, to 
its primitive inhabitants. This widely roving race has 
just struck the black races of Africa and the older civili- 
zation of Asia. The same result must follow. The law 
of rhythm, if it is fundamental, teaches that this Indo- 
Germanic civilization, which modern history now calls 
the English, must eventually succumb to a still stronger 
one, but probably an intellectually better one. 

All mankind have regulated their domestic and busi- 
ness affairs by the rhythmic motions of the earth around 
its axis and in its orbit. The regular succession of day 
and night, and of the seasons, entirely control all the 
actions and thoughts of mankind. There is an occa- 
sional spasmodic individual effort to reverse this natural 
order but always with more or less disastrous effect. 



96 PHYSICAL BASIS OF MIND AND MORALS 

Man cannot change the night into day, nor fail to ob- 
serve the orderly succession of the seasons, in all his 
operations. He may as well try to overcome the attrac- 
tion of gravitation by building a railway to the moon. 
The equilibrium in his own organism would be quickly 
destroyed by any change his efforts could make, while 
the universal rhythm of all natural phenomena will con- 
tinue without a jar perpetually. 

Even the rise and fall in prices in trade follow the 
same law. Periods of business activity and prosperity 
are invariably followed by dullness and financial depres- 
sion. Buckle says that marriages follow the price of 
corn. They are governed more by what are called ma- 
terial conditions than by sentiment. "New York city re- 
ports about 1250 more marriages in 1901 than in 1900, 
Baltimore about 100 more, and Cincinnati 252 more. 
These cities can be taken as examples and when mar- 
riage statistics are made up elsewhere they will doubt- 
less show the same record of increase. This was ex- 
pected. The year was a prosperous one, and according 
to all past experience it should have shown an increase 
in marriages. The vital statistics of civilized nations 
illustrate this fact. So well has this become known in 
England that the registrar general's office in that coun- 
try looks upon the marriage rate as the barometer of 
national prosperity and as able to point out periods of 
good and bad times as infallibly as the money market." * 

The emotions, imagination, and everything that the 
world has been in the habit of calling the spiritual, are 
simply functions, and we are governed entirely by so- 
called physical laws. Try mentally to separate any one 
of them for a moment from its physical connections and 



Philadelphia Sun. 



the: rhythm of motion 9<j 

it vanishes, it eludes the profoundest research. No se- 
paration of these functions from their material connec- 
tion is possible. They are simply forms of manifesta- 
tions of motion and matter. When the philosopher makes 
a study of his own organism, or by introspection views 
the workings of his nervous structure he finds the same 
rhythmic law. The heart beats, the respiratory func- 
tions, the peristaltic action, sleep and waking, are all 
governed by the same principle. Every well informed 
physician is familiar with the ebb and flow of disease 
in quantity and quality. 

The mentality of the human organism is controlled by 
the same principle. It is the rhythmic response of the 
nervous tissue by means of molecular motion, to the ob- 
jective environment. That environment is rhythmic, 
therefore psychical phenomena are likewise. The corre- 
spondence of thought to the relationship of conditions in 
the physical environment makes it the echo of those con- 
ditions. Therefore it is rhythmical. It could not be 
otherwise. Even the poet's imagination, and what he 
terms his inspiration, are periodical. His hours of in- 
clination and ability to use his brain are regularly fol- 
lowed by his hours of rest and disinclination. The co- 
ordination of the organism with the subtle law of rhythm 
is as unconscious to the ego as are the before-mentioned 
eleven motions of the earth, no one of which he feels. 
Therefore, the organism must have been evolved and not 
suddenly created, else there could scarcely be such per- 
fect accord. The law of evolution is therefore a reason- 
able inference from the foregoing facts. 

The constant ever-recurring phenomena of life and 
death, are, perfect examples of the rhythm of matter and 
motion. Molecules of organic matter are ever integrat- 
ing and disintegrating. When they come together in the 



98 PHYSICAL BASIS OF MIND AND MORALS 

form of plastic physiological compound units under 
favorable conditions, they attract units of the same or- 
der. A growth is thus commenced and aggregates in 
time a moving equilibrium, called an organism, which 
attains a certain size and age, then gradually loses its 
organic motion, until it no longer remains a moving, 
but a perfect equilibrium — called death. Then its mo- 
lecules responsive to the incident force of heat, rear- 
range themselves into their original and comparatively 
homogeneous state, only to again condense to a definite 
heterogeneity, when the favorable conditions arise, and 
thus repeat the rhythm of integration and disintegration. 

It seems to be evident, from the few examples given 
above, which might be extended to include every phe- 
nomenon in organic life, that such life is essentially a 
correspondence with the inorganic, depends on it for its 
existence, the harmony of the connection meaning life in 
proportion to such harmony; complete inharmony mean- 
ing death. 

Rhythm, Fundamental and Universal. ■ — It might be 
profitable to trace in this connection, the scientific the- 
ories now held regarding* the constant interchange of 
matter and motion going on in the universe, as seen by 
the best trained intellects, aided by the most efficient ap- 
paratus now available, in reference to their universal 
rhythm. 

Kant and LaPlace first advanced the theory that the 
matter composing the solid bodies of the universe was 
once in a gaseous condition, that the matter of the sun 
and planets once filled the whole space of the outer orbit 
of the farthest planet, and was then what is called a neb- 
ula ; that an atom of matter is an indestructible unit, 
inconceivably small and in inconceivably rapid oscilla- 
tion in empty space. (Now supposed to be composed of 



thf, rhythm of motion 99 

ions or electric discharges.) This nebula contained all 
the elements now composing the complex bodies and all 
the pervasive ether of the visible universe. Evolution, 
using the matter and motion existing in the nebula figur- 
atively speaking, produced all the varied forms now ex- 
isting. It is now as active as it ever was. New forms 
are constantly being evolved from the disintegrated 
matter and motion of old forms and whatever exists in 
way of phenomena, physical or psychical, is the result 
of evolution in the materials originally existing in the 
nebula. No outside force or power has ever interfered 
in any way in modifying the process, or in abstracting or 
adding any element not originally existing in the nebula. 
In using this language it must be understood that evolu- 
tion is the name of the Cosmical process and is in no 
sense an entity, nor a personality. — This is phenomen- 
ism. 

The nebula in some way, explained mathematically, 
by Newton's principle of the attraction of gravitation, 
which is only a process — (he does not pretend to define 
the nature or cause of it) — assumed numerous centers, to- 
ward which the atoms were attracted, thus initiating an- 
other motion in addition to its molecular oscillation. 

This motion toward a center would necessarily be 
rapid and straight, except that Newton's principle teaches 
that each atom is also attracted by every other atom in 
inverse proportion to the distance of their centers. 
This therefore produced a centrifugal in addition to 
the before mentioned centripetal motion. This also is 
what is called arrested motion, the centrifugal having 
arrested the centripetal and resulted in producing light 
and heat. What now remains of this arrested molecular 
motion in the nebula of our system is the sun; and its 
light and heat are produced by this arrested motion. 



100 PHYSICAL BASIS OF MIND AND MORALS 

Now, the oscillation of the atom is rhythm. The oppo- 
site force of centripetal and centrifugal motions, pro- 
duced in the mass a spiral or circular motion, which is 
also rhythmical. The theory contemplates that by grad- 
ual integration of the atoms upon self-constituted cen- 
ters, the planets were successively formed, and as the 
condensation continued each planet was left in the posi- 
tion it now occupies, with its moment of momentum un- 
changed from what it was when it formed a part of the 
nebula. These facts however, could not change the na- 
ture of the atoms, nor their motions individually or in 
mass. Therefore, the rhythm existing, before integra- 
tion, in all the motions of the atom, continued after the 
planets came into existence. In fact, the rhythmic mo- 
tions mentioned appear to be genetic and cannot change 
in whatever form any of them have assumed, by select- 
ing new centers, either in inorganic or in organic bodies. 
As all bodies known are made up of these same atoms 
of the original nebula, then all bodies partake of the 
same rhythmic motion, which, as far as scientific investi- 
gation has gone, is common to all matter everywhere, 
and in every form. 

This is the nebular theory of LaPlace and Kant. 
But now comes J. C. Vogt, with a work called, "The Na- 
ture of Electricity and Magnetism on the Basis of a 
Simplified Conception of Substance," with a theory, ac- 
cepted by Ernst Hseckel, but so far as I know by few 
other scientists, at present, that the primitive principle 
of matter is not the vibration or oscillation of atoms in 
empty space, but condensation. The centers of this 
universal condensation correspond in general with the 
atoms of the other theory. They differ, however, in pos- 
sessing the functions of sensation and inclination, or 
what Hseckel calls, will movement of the simplest form. 



thd rhythm of motion 101 

Moreover these pyknotoms, as they may be called, do not 
float in empty space, but are surrounded with an ex- 
tremely attenuated intermediate substance, which repre- 
sents the uncondensed portion of primitive matter. Thus 
we have the ponderable substance, with its power of sen- 
sation and inclination, and imponderable ether, which is 
matter homogeneous. 

Now, these condensed atoms and their motion or 
function, together, form a universal substance ; substance 
being matter and motion combined. 

Chemistry, which deals entirely with substance, de- 
monstrates the likes and dislikes of these atoms. They 
have their loves and hatreds. These are constant. All 
bodies, both organic and inorganic, are made up of these 
atoms of substance. The characteristics of these bodies, 
or aggregations of atoms, are nothing more than the dif- 
ferentiated motion or function, always existing. Most 
of these aggregations are capable of chemical analysis. 
But about eighty of them are called simple elements, be- 
cause they cannot be analyzed by man ; yet, they probably 
are aggregations of these primitive atoms of substance. 
Some of these "simple elements" make up all inorganic 
bodies. Others combine in definite proportions in less 
stable molecules and form organic bodies, that is bodies 
with organs. But the same functional atoms, that is, 
atoms with sensation and inclination form the content 
of all. 

Hseckel calls this discovery of Vogt's, of the principle 
of condensation, the greatest of the nineteenth century. 
But it does not affect the law of universal rhythm in 
ponderable matter, which is the substance of all visible 
forms. Imponderable ether, being homogeneous, cannot 
be composed of atoms, otherwise it could not fill all 
space, yet the transmitting of light and heat waves is 



102 PHYSICAL BASIS OF MIND AND MORALS 

rhythmic. Ether is a theory of scientific necessity, as a 
support of the vibratory theory of light and heat. As 
all the different forms of matter, from inorganic granite 
up to organic man, are simply the differentiated aggre- 
gations of the atoms of the nebula, after they have con- 
densed into substance; they must all have the rhythmic 
motion, and all, in different degrees only, respond to in- 
cident forces. This response is what Hseckel calls the 
loves and hatreds of substance. 

The difference between the organic and inorganic, 
seems to be one of mobility only. The four principle 
simple elements entering into organisms, are oxygen, 
hydrogen, carbon, and nitrogen. Three of these are the 
most unstable of substances. The combination of them 
in what is called an organic cell, a combination that only 
the laboratory of Nature by the process of evolution has 
heretofore produced, by first forming them into what 
Spencer calls compound physiological units, perhaps 
by chemical affinity, results in that obscure form of mo- 
tion called life. But the essential original characteristics 
of the atoms are not changed by any combination they 
can make, and this rather obscure mobility of substance, 
which we call life, is perhaps the aggregated mobility 
of the atom, increased by chemical combination and 
electricity into physiological units at present little under- 
stood 

An organism, being composed of units of the above 
mentioned four simple substances, together with added 
sulphur and phosphorus, in the nerve matter, is very un- 
stable in its composition. It is therefore greatly re- 
sponsive to incident forces in the environment. The 
constant mobility results in an ever changing combina- 
tion of chemical units which is termed molecular, motion. 
In the muscular and bone tissue this molecular motion 



the: rhythm of motion 103 

is life. In the nerve tissue, in addition to vitality, it is 
mentality. But inorganic matter, being the segregation 
of units, having great chemical attraction for each other, 
are more stable and in comparative equilibrium. The 
point to be observed is that the difference is one merely 
of degree, the ultimate atoms of both being all alike. 
It must be understood that the word "atom" here used 
is a generic term covering all phases of the ultimate unit 
— whether atom, ion or electric discharge, or a center of 
function. 

This principle of condensation of matter, which 
Hseckel says was discovered by Vogt, is most likely the 
explanation of the inherent tendency in everything 
psychic as well as physical in the universe, to integrate. 
As the organism of man is made up entirely of the atoms 
or centers of energy which at one time formed a part of 
the nebula from which the solar system is evolved their 
tendency of condensation is still the characteristic prin- 
ciple in their perpetual motion, and this tendency has 
imparted to the grey matter of the brain the mental im- 
pulses of mankind to cling together in the struggle for 
existence in the aggregations of families, tribes, com- 
munities, states, and nations. It resulted in the establish- 
ment of not only churches, creeds and religions, but of 
that great foundation of every religion and all ethical 
codes — the brotherhood of man. 

As early as 1871, St. George Mivart, who wrote a 
book in opposition to the sufficiency of Darwin's theory 
of "Natural Selection," said, "It is quite conceivable that 
the material organic world may be so constituted, that 
the, simultaneous action upon it of all known forces, me- 
chanical, physical, chemical, magnetic, terrestrial, and 
cosmical, together with other yet unknown forces, which 
probably exist, may result in changes which are harmoni- 



104 PHYSICAL BASIS OF MIND AXD MORALS 

ous and symmetrical, just as the internal nature of vi- 
brating plates causes particles of sand scattered over 
them to assume symmetrical and definite figures, when 
made to oscillate in different ways, by the bow of a violin 
being drawn along their edges. In such a way the rep- 
aration of local injuries might be symbolized as a fill- 
ing up and completion of an interrupted rhythm." He 
seems to think this may be a prime cause of the dif- 
ferentiation of species. 

The human, and all other organisms, are in such 
harmony with the before-mentioned rythmic motions of 
the earth and stars that they are unconscious of any 
motion, and only know it by mathematical reasoning. 
In other words, the organic and inorganic are perfectly 
equilibrated, and form together a moving equilibrium 
in the universe as a whole. This result is inevitable, be- 
cause of the monistic character of the atoms, composing 
both organic and inorganic. This law of substance ap- 
plies to both. This conclusion must follow, whether we 
adopt the kinetic theory of vibratory oscillation, or the 
pyknotic hypothesis of Vogt, and the universal rhythm 
contended for is not disturbed by either hypothesis. 

This is monism, when it is found that all things in 
the universe are composed of identical atoms or ions, 
and these may be merely centers ^of energy or func- 
tion. There is a certain degree of life in everything, la- 
tent in the inorganic, active in the organic. Hylozoism 
is true to that extent. At least there is a constant 
change occurring in all bodies and a re-adaptation of 
them to each other and to the universe. The difference 
as observed before, between the life of the organic and 
the inorganic, lies in the degree of the mobility of its 
units. Not only rhythm, but every other phenomenon 
characteristic of the one, is, in a certain degree, charac- 



THE RHYTHM OF MOTION 105 

teristic of the other. While thought would seem to be 
a function of the human brain alone, yet it is an arbi- 
trary term to define a form of molecular motion that 
characterizes all molecules (compound units of atoms) 
in some degree, whether they exist in the grey matter 
of the nerve tissue, or in the primitive and most inert 
rocks of the earth. There is a soul of substance in all. 
Man has no monopoly of soul. He has it in a higher 
degree only, soul meaning psychical function or motion. 
Molecular attraction, whether in the form of love, or in 
the form of chemical attraction, is in substance, the 
same. Molecular repulsion is, in the same sense, hatred. 
These are strongest in the organic nerve tissue, less active 
in the muscular tissue and the vegetable kingdom, still 
weaker in inorganic compounds. But in every form of 
substance when the proper relations are brought to bear, 
the same results are produced in different degrees. This 
is the connection we are seeking. 

Therefore the observed phenomena, heretofore men- 
tioned, have a fundamental basis or final cause in the 
nature of the monistic and universal law of substance, 
of which all things are composed. Rhythm of motion 
in one form of matter means the same rhythm of mo- 
tion in quality everywhere. The nebulous molecules 
of matter and the same nebulous motion attending 
them, make up, with only local differences of what 
may be called attraction and repulsion, the phenom- 
ena going on everywhere in the universe. Could there 
be the same local attraction of gravitation and the 
same incidence of other forms of force in quantity, 
the identical combination of matter would occur to 
a satellite of Arcturus, for example, as on our earth, 
and the same forms of organisms would evolve there 
as here. The atoms there are identical with those 



106 PHYSICAL BASIS OF MIND AND MORALS 

here. But what is termed morphology must be different 
in degree or quantity there, from what it is here, and 
therefore the integration of matter in the forms of or- 
ganisms must be different, but in form only, not in func- 
tion or "soul." Perhaps they are not exactly alike in 
form in any two localities near or remote. All I know 
about polarity of matter, is that inorganic matter when 
it has integrated throughout the macrocosm has formed 
in globular and quasi-globular forms around an axis, hav- 
ing a positive and negative pole, and that organic mat- 
ter in the microcosm, or organism, does likewise. For 
instance, in the form of vegetation, it has for its type the 
uniaxial stem, leaf and flower, with the petals arranged 
in a whorl. Whatever variations arise from these 
typical forms by different impacts of incident forces, 
vary correlatively the axis; but always the body can be 
divided through the axis into similar halves. Without 
tediously elaborating the details, this uniformity of axial 
integration throughout the cosmos may be identical with, 
or caused by the rhythm of motion ; or by the causes that 
also produce the rhythm. For there is undoubtedly a 
close connection between this universal rhythm, and such 
observed differentiated forms of energy, as the attrac- 
tion of gravitation, electricity, and chemical attraction, 
all perhaps being mere variations of one cosmic force. 
The rhythm may be caused by the combination of all the 
forms of this energy. When Faraday said that it is 
likely that the numerous so-called simple substances 
would be eventually reduced to one, with two polarities, 
we can well imagine that the polarity meant is really the 
same in principle as Vogt's condensation, the motion of 
matter in its tendency to integrate or dissipate in the 
monistic rhythmic manner now observable throughout 
the universe; always around an axis, having attraction 



the: rhythm of MOTION 107 

at one end and repulsion at the other. It is the evolu- 
tion of harmonious bodies, or matter en masse. The 
properties of radium seem to verify the prophecy of 
Faraday. 

The bearing that these conclusions have upon the 
current ideas of "life," "soul," ''mind," and "thought" 
is apparent to the thinker. It is generally believed in a 
hazy indefinite way, that these four words indicate : — 
the first three, entities that have been specially created 
and put into matter only when it assumes certain forms ; 
that thought is a function only of the human mind, as 
an entity, and therefore an agent having will of its own 
and in no way a product of matter and motion. But the 
facts heretofore described, seem to show that all these 
are natural effects of physical causes; that "life" is an 
obscure form of motion, differing in no qualitative man- 
ner from all other motions of matter ; that "soul" is the 
attraction and repulsion of ultimate centers of function 
wherever they may be, in the nebula or in the human 
brain; that "mind" is the "aggregation of feelings" pro- 
duced in all bodies possessing nerves by the molecular 
motions of the nerve tissue; that "thought," or the proc- 
ess of getting ideas, is the result of the same molecular 
motion in the neural patterns of the prosencephalon. 

In former times whoever wrote upon these subjects 
used the words "mind" and "soul" as entities, or sub- 
stances within the body of each human being. No 
thought seemed to be given by Descartes in his treat- 
ment of the Ego to the anatomy and physiology of the 
organism in connection with mental phenomena. But in 
the papers and discussions in the psychological section 
of the Congress of Arts and Sciences of the World's 
Fair at St. Louis in September, 1904, I did not hear the 
word soul and I think not the word mind. The concept 



108 PHYSICAL BASIS OF MIND AND MORALS 

"consciousness" has taken their place and the new sci- 
ence of psychology has compelled its investigators to 
make their first approach to a study of what was form- 
erly called "mind" and "soul" through the material 
structure of brain and nerves. 

So we conclude that all things, organic and inor- 
ganic, have been evolved by the same combination of, the 
different forms of force, that also produces the universal 
rhythm of them, so as to conform at every step of their 
evolution to this rhythm. Life itself nowhere could be 
maintained if out of harmony with it. Viewed through 
the eyes of philosophy the correspondence of the human 
organism, in this rhythmic harmony with the environ- 
ment is a necessary, and, therefore, a beautiful law for 
the welfare of the species. If man would struggle in- 
tellectually to make this correspondence as complete as 
possible, he could make in that way the most of life. 
Life must be regulated by the natural harmonious 
rhythm, pervading all things, or it fails in completeness. 
The intellect of man is the latest product on the earth 
of the evolution of substance. Man is a part of and one 
with the whole and necessarily must accord in his struc- 
ture and function with every law that controls the earth 
in its movements, its temperature, its polarity, its cur- 
rents of electricity, its rhythm. He cannot change one 
of these laws. He cannot change his location from this 
planet to another. If he could sail through space and 
light upon some other planet, he would likely at once 
dissolve into the original gasses out of which he was 
originally evolved, because he is not in accord with the 
local rhythm there. Therefore, this earth is his. only 
habitat. The practical study for him to pursue, there- 
fore, is how to make the most of his location; how to 
prolong his life, and enlarge his knowledge of himself 



THF, RHYTHM OF MOTION 109 

and his environment; to study what his relationship is 
to all the manifest phenomena of this cosmic force sur- 
rounding him, and his best means of keeping his being 
in such correspondence with them, that his organism 
may receive, in both time * and space, all the benefits it is 
possible to obtain in his present form. 



* Time is our consciousness of natural changes in phe- 
nomena. 



CHAPTER V 

HUMAN KNOWLEDGE AND ITS LIMITATIONS 

I do not want to unduly minimize the greatness of 
man, but we must remember that all we know about him 
comes from a very interested witness — himself. For 
instance, Shakespeare says of him : 

"What a piece of work is man! How noble in reason! 

How infinite in faculties ! 
In form and moving how express and admirable! 

In action, how like an angel! 
In apprehension, how like a God! The beauty of the 
world ! 

The paragon of animals !" * 

This is the fulsome eulogy of a poet, who is an "in- 
terested party," and not a scientist. Now, hear what 
a scientist says on the other side — one who did not 
write poetry. 

Darwin in his "Descent of Man" says that, "Some 
naturalists in classifying the animal kingdom, have given 
man a separate order. Man having the only written 
language among animals, was enabled to do this with- 
out the protest of the monkeys, who are not only in the 
same order with him, but that man is not really entitled 
to a separate family." 

That is the testimony of a scientist whose writings 
impress me as the purest seeking after nothing but the 



* Hamlet. Act 2, Scene 2. 

no 



knowledge: and its limitations hi 

truth, that I have ever read. Darwin's classification 
would be based on the principles of evolution. In the 
6th edition of his "Origin of Species," he gives the pref- 
erence to embryological congenitalism as the basis of ani- 
mal classification. This would result in classification 
based upon comparative heterogeneity. 

Cuvier's classification of the animal kingdom, (which 
I believe is the popular one, and is a great advance on 
that of Linnaeus), gives man the separate order of 
"Bimana," and the monkeys a separate order of "Quad- 
rimana." It strikes me that if the hands made a suffi- 
cient differentiation of structure on which to base an or- 
der, then the more hands one has, the higher would be 
the order. But "Bimana" is placed before "Quadri- 
mana." In this connection it would be well to remark 
that the naturalist who from prejudice, or theological 
predilection, makes every effort to give undue promi- 
nence to man in the classification of the animal kingdom 
does not thereby do so, and he cannot stretch his scien- 
tific conscience sufficiently to find any reasonable fit place 
for man, until he has gone down the scale from king- 
dom, through branch and class, to order, and if Darwin 
is correct (and I have no doubt he is) then he and 
monkeys should be placed in the same order, and man 
reduced to at most a family of that order. 

Now, if man had been specially created at the head 
of .the animal kingdom, he certainly could be classified 
as such. In fact, in such event, he could not be classed 
with other animals at all. But in order to be placed 
biologically he has to take his organic position with ani- 
mals having backbones and mammae. This is a strong 
inference for his evolution from a lower order, not how- 
ever, from the present race of monkeys, but from the 



112 PHYSICAL BASIS OF MIND AND MORALS 

same lower order from which the present family of 
monkeys emanated. 

Classification as said above will eventually be based 
upon the facts of evolution. As a starting point : homo- 
geneity will serve, and orders, classes, families, genera 
and species, will be determined by the degree of evolu- 
tion from homogeneity to heterogeneity, or by the facts 
of common origin, as shown by the various steps of em- 
bryology. 

Nature, who is the leveler of all ranks, and who is 
always uniform in her favors and disfavors, will not 
allow man to arbitrarily repudiate his kinship to his 
brother, Ourang-Outang. It would perhaps take a per- 
sonality above and beyond human influence to place man, 
even biologically, where he belongs. Where would he 
place him intellectually? 

Man has heretofore been appropriating the only mind 
to himself, not only this, but he dogmatically assumes 
that his mind, which he sometimes calls a soul, is a sep- 
arate and distinct thing from the rest of his organism, 
which has been specially created for him alone, and is 
not subject to the laws governing other organisms, or 
what is known as the physical universe. He would not 
give the smallest modicum of soul to any organism not 
walking upright and articulating words. A dog's artic- 
ulation by his tail would not answer. 

We dwell on one of the smaller planets of a solar 
system, which, if placed where the Pleiades now are, 
could not be seen by the naked eye. Our sun is only a 
star ; not larger than the third, and some astronomers 
say of the sixth, magnitude. Our earth is not a millionth 
part of the solar system in bulk, and our solar system 
is scarcely an appreciable part of the sidereal system. 

'The orbit of the earth," says Edw. Clodd, "seen 



KNOWLEDGE AND ITS LIMITATIONS 113 

from the nearest fixed star, is but a pin's point." The 
largest telescope yet made fails to find any boundary to 
space, and no end to the countless globes moving in it. 
The longest diameter of our earth's orbit is more than 
a hundred and sixty-five million miles. The fixed stais, 
which are also suns, having systems of satellites, are so 
far away from us, that no difference can be perceived 
in their relative positions, whether seen from one end of 
this long diameter or the other. Our system, we are in- 
formed by astronomers, is moving as a whole, toward a 
certain point in the constellation of Hercules, or toward 
the star Vega, at the rate of four hundred million miles 
a year. But this does not necessarily mean that Hercules 
and the solar system will come together. For Hercules 
may be moving as fast in the same direction. 

Notwithstanding the above mentioned obscurity of 
man's habitat compared with the universe, it is common to 
think how wonderful it is that man knows so much; to 
what heights of thought and imagination he can soar. 
But when we come to analyze this supposed knowledge 
and compare it with what phenomena evidently still re- 
main to be known, it is apparent that these are mistaken 
ideas. The efforts and the thoughts of the coming in- 
tellect, should be given to the investigation of those things 
that are within the knowable environment and are of 
probable importance to man's welfare as a denizen of this 
globe and to his longevity therein. It was little more 
than three centuries ago that one man perceived that there 
was some motion to this earth, and he was persecuted be- 
cause he asserted that fact. In reality, man while know- 
ing more than other animals, is yet very insignificant and 
knows little about the reality even of his insignificant 
abiding place. Some men, however, assume to know 
both his origin and his destiny. 



114 PHYSICAL BASIS OF MIND AND MORALS 

The fact seems to be that the sensory organs can 
respond to only a limited number of incident phases of 
the persistence of force. The eye or retina can receive 
sensations of light only when the vibrations of ether are 
of certain length and rapidity. The ear can hear only 
when sound waves of the ether impinge on the drum 
structure at a certain other length and rapidity. It is 
so with touch, taste and smell. It is altogether likely 
that the structure of our nervous system responds to 
very few of the innumerable forms that matter and 
motion assume throughout the cosmos. This is the true 
reason of the limitation of our knowledge. The human 
organism seems to have evolved in response to those in- 
cident forms of force that contribute to its struggle for 
existence only, and all phases of its physical aspect are 
emanations from this utilitarian necessity. There hav- 
ing been no necessity for it to respond to any other forms 
of force, there is consequently no structure capable of 
it. We have no sense organ for any response to the real- 
ities of matter and motion. We perceive only manifesta- 
tions or phenomena, not origin nor totality of meaning. 
The "why" of any phenomenon is blank to us. We are 
incapable of conceiving the nature of the attraction of 
gravitation, or the real reason for constant molar motion 
throughout the universe. We cannot lift the veil that 
conceals the "whence" and the "whither," because bio- 
logical evolution has not yet given the organs adapted 
to receive sensations from such objective truths. It is 
likely that our present neural structure responds to an 
infinitely small part of the infinitely great variety of phe- 
nomena. All beyond such response is a blank to us. 

The insignificance of man as a part of the universe 
is shown, not only by the comparative bulk of our earth 
and man's locality upon it, and his want of high brain 



KNOWLEDGE AND ITS LIMITATIONS 115 

structure, but also by showing upon what a narrow vari- 
ation of temperature his existence depends. I think it 
was President Jordan of Leland Stanford Jr. University 
that said, "If a thermometer could be constructed as 
high as Trinity steeple, that would measure all the de- 
grees of temperature that probably exist in the universe, 
that the degrees in which it is possible for life to survive 
on the earth, would be no more than one stone in that 
structure." 

Man is scarcely a speck in the universe, and is cor- 
respondingly ignorant, but he can at least learn more of 
his vital relationship to phenomena within the reach of 
his senses, and would be wise to confine his study to 
these. 

The matter on the dry plate of the photographer is 
giving us more information of the universe than the 
retina of the eye aided by the magnifying power of the 
most powerful lenses, has heretofore perceived. The 
colors of the spectroscope, produced by the motion of 
incandescent matter, by waves of ether are giving us in- 
formation heretofore unknown and unperceived. 

Delusions have always, since the evolution of mental- 
ity, existed in the past, for example, the "Crusades," 
"Witchcraft," "Monarchy," Militarism," "The Craze 
for Riches," "Appearance of Ghosts." The man in a 
hypnotic state whose psychology is likely abnormal is 
made to see and believe things that do not exist, and 
could not be photographed. The human mind may be 
fooled, but not the more intelligent matter on the photo- 
grapher's plate. 

Delusions are not confined to the so-called ignorant. 
Sir Mathew Hale, though a learned judge of England, 
and the Mathers, though dominating Massachusetts in- 
tellectually, believed in witchcraft. Every delusion of 



116 PHYSICAL BASIS OF MIND AND MORALS 

the present day has its votaries among the so-called 
learned and great, so that it has ceased to become a 
reason for the truth that Gladstone or Bismarck, or other 
so-called intellectual giants are devotees or believers. 
They may be learned in many things, but be exceedingly 
ignorant or willfully ignorant of those things most im- 
portant for man's real welfare. 

The hobgoblin beliefs of one century are naturally 
classed as delusions by the next, although the beliefs of 
the latter are mere modifications of the former. This 
fact brings them within the operations of natural evolu- 
tion, by selection of the fittest and the dying out of the 
unfit, which is slowly bringing mankind nearer and 
nearer, age after age, to the approximate truths of nat- 
ural law. In other words, as man's nervous structure 
evolves into higher responsiveness to the obscure laws 
of natural cause and effect, his preconceived ideas fade 
from his mind. Man at present seems to be willfully 
and woefully ignorant. He knows the reality of nothing. 
That he is slowly evolving into a higher correspondence 
with phenomenon and its laws, is quite certain. To what 
extent he will, while confined to this earth, (man being 
a late product of the persistence of force, that long ages 
before he was begun, produced the other apparent forms 
of matter) eventually know the causes and affects in the 
universe, is a problem I am incapable of solving. 

What the limits of this evolution of structure and 
function may be is one of the unknown things. But it 
is safe to say that it will be controlled by the natural 
limitations of locality and organic neural structure. As 
long as the organism is held by the indissoluble ties of 
gravitation to this earth, bounded by the little percep- 
tions we can have from this point of view, even with all 
the aids of optical and other inventions, such as the 



KNOWLEDGE AND ITS LIMITATIONS 11? 

spectroscope and photography to assist the natural 
senses, we may reasonably conclude that such corre- 
spondence will reach but a very limited area of the un- 
known. However, all finite things within the above limi- 
tations that are capable of scientific investigation will, in 
the slow process of evolution, if not already known, be- 
come so; not in their ultimate essence, perhaps, but in 
their relativity, the only way, according to Herbert 
Spencer, anything is known to us. Man advances in the 
knowable, however limited that may be, and just as he 
advances, his delusions about what is apparently un- 
knowable, fade from his mind. Among the monuments 
marking such advancement heretofore, it is well here to 
note the discovery that all phenomena are traceable to 
one source — the persistence of force; another great dis- 
covery is the unity of nature ; and a few of the attributes 
only of that unknown thing called matter. 

Darwin, when he discovered the principle of evolu- 
tion by natural selection, made a long stride, (as it were) 
into the domain of the unknown, but not of the unknow- 
able. He paid no attention to the unknowable absolute, 
nor to the origin of life, nor to the status after death, 
nor of the cause of variations in organisms, by means 
of which natural selection eventually produces species. It 
was a long time before even scientists would consent to 
exchange their belief in special creation for the more 
reasonable natural processes of evolution. But the array 
of incontrovertible facts in the "Origin of Species" 
finally overcame their inherited prejudices, and now no 
prominent scientist but accepts it, to some extent and in 
some form. Since his time, however, and especially 
at the present time, very much attention is being given 
by scientists to the origin of life with reference only 
however to its emanation from the inorganic, and the 



118 PHYSICAL BASIS OF MIND AND MORALS 

cause of variation, to the extent at least of brushing away 
its mystery and its noli me tangere sacredness. 

Weisman while formulating a theory of natural selec- 
tion in germ plasm does not pretend to account for the 
origin of the tendency of the biophor to evolve the vari- 
ation upon which natural selection operates to produce 
the structure; and while Professors Burke and Loeb are 
showing by chemical combinations that life may be pro- 
duced eventually in the laboratory from inorganic sub- 
stance, yet they cannot pretend to experiment on the 
origin of matter, nor of energy. It may eventually be 
shown that life is a form of matter and motion, and of 
course, all forms have origin. 

Spencer further enlarged the knowledge of the nat- 
ural, by showing in his "Synthetic Philosophy" that not 
only living organisms, but all phenomena in nature and 
society, dynamic and static, are the results of this same 
law of evolution, and that life itself, which by some is 
called a "vital principle," is only a differentiated phase 
of motion and matter, more complicated and therefore 
only less discernable to the human intellect, than other 
aspects of this same matter and motion. In other words, 
it is natural. 

Everything called phenomenon can ultimately be dis- 
covered in its phenomenal relation to other things, but 
that noumenon the reality of things, or the power, 
claimed by Spencer, to be behind and probably producing 
the phenomena can probably never be known. The his- 
toric origin of life will not be discovered, but the mode 
of its arising from the inorganic will be, because it must 
be a phenomenon of the interchange of matter and mo- 
tion, perfectly apparent to the human senses. 

With regard to the distinctive properties of living 
matter, Prof. C. Lloyd Morgan in his article on "Vital- 



KNOWLEDGE AND ITS LIMITATIONS 119 

ism," (see "Monist," p. 196, January 1899) says, "If by 
'Vital Force' we mean the noumenal cause of the spe- 
cial modes of molecular motion that characterize proto- 
plasm, its metaphysical validity may be acknowledged, so 
long as it is regarded as immanent in the dynamical sys- 
tem and not interpolated from without in a manner un- 
known throughout the rest of the wide realm of nature." 
I take this to mean that life is not a supernatural, but a 
natural phenomenon. 

The origin of matter cannot be known because that 
is one of the elements producing phenomena and is only 
perceptible to the human senses by its differences and 
relations, such as resistance, weight, form, etc. In 
other words, man is not in possession of nerve structure 
responsive to other than phenomena. 

Every knowable thing has the relation of objective 
and subjective. The unknowable not having this rela- 
tion, is therefore unrelationed, or unconditioned. The 
human mind is capable of knowing only the conditioned. 
We can perceive that the same force that holds in place 
the innumerable globes, making up the stellar system, 
called gravitation, likewise holds together the atoms of 
which these globes are composed, usually called "co- 
hesion" or "affinity," and that these atoms are every- 
where the same, whether in the grey matter of the brain, 
the ether filling all space unoccupied by substance, or 
the rocks and debris of all globes. The different combi- 
nations of these make the great variety of effects appar- 
ent to the senses. The power forcing these uniform 
atoms to segregate into so many myriad forms, is the 
unknowable. But we give it scientific shape by calling 
it "Persistence of Force." 

It would be only a repetition of the foregoing ideas 
to say that the difference between the knowable and the 



120 PHYSICAL BASIS OF MIND AND MORALS 

unknowable can also be expressed by the more popular 
terms of the natural and supernatural. The natural con- 
tains both elements of the definition of knowledge here- 
after given, the objective and the subjective; while the 
supernatural is deficient of the objective. It is purely 
subjective. It is what theologians call faith. Faith can- 
not be defined scientifically because our senses cannot 
receive impressions from its subject. Metaphysically it 
is want of knowledge. Science, therefore, is confined 
to the treatment of the natural I do not mean by the 
term "science" a process confined only to the intellectual 
few. "Scientific method consists in close observation, 
frequently repeated, so as to eliminate the possibility of 
erroneous seeing; in experiments checked and controlled 
in every direction in which fallacies might arise; in con- 
tinuous reflection on the appearances of phenomena ob- 
served, and in logically reasoning out their meaning, and 
the conclusions to be drawn from them." 

"A previously equipped mathematical mind, a wide 
reach of identifying force, and an indifference or superi- 
ority to poetical and fanciful aspects, concur in all the 
authors of discoveries that bind the conjunctions of Na- 
ture in mathematical laws." Also, "Science is repellent 
to the natural mind from the necessity of dissociating 
appearances that go naturally and easily together, of re- 
nouncing the full and total aspect of an object whereby 
it engages agreeably the various senses, and of resting 
upon some feature that has no interest to the common 
eye." * 

That is, the brain of man has been organized or 
evolved, by long generations of correlations of certain 
sensations coming from the most observable appearances 



"The Senses and the Intellect," by Alexander Bain. P. 518. 



knowledge; and its limitations 121 

of objects in the environment. Scientific observation by 
an occasional superior brain goes beneath these appear- 
ances and receives its sensations from the more complex 
and heterogeneous and definite qualities and combines 
these into a logical principle of general application. The 
unscientific mind not having any structure of brain to 
respond to such complex sensations, is repulsed and 
therefore exhibits no interest. 

Even Kepler, whose wonderful ability led him to the 
discovery of the now accepted law governing the orbits 
of the planets, was so saturated by inheritance and edu- 
cation with superstition, that he could not see how the 
planets were held in place, unless by a spirit at each star. 
His intellect was far superior to most men of the present 
day. 

The inference is, that delusions fully as absurd must 
possess the minds of the present generation of the most 
intellectual men. But Spencer says, "As fast as experi- 
ence proves that certain familiar changes always happen 
in the same sequence, there begins to fade from the mind 
the conception of a' special personality, to whose variable 
will they were before ascribed." 

In the light of evolution these historical facts as men- 
tioned teach some important scientific and philosophic 
lessons. They surely indicate also that the human intel- 
lect or the human consciousness is a growth and not a 
creation. There is no indication either in human records 
or in the anatomy and physiology of the human organ- 
ism, that man was ever perfect, or that ever at any prev- 
ious period of his race development he comprehended as 
much of his environment and the significance of phenom- 
ena as he does now. Induction seems to have been a 
late method in his psychology and the primitive races 
seem now to know nothing of it, unless it may be in 



122 PHYSICAL BASIS OF MIND AND MORALS 

some unconscious processes' in which the lower orders of 
brute organisms are equally proficient. His power of 
abstraction and generalization has come only with the 
evolution of nervous centers, principally in the cerebrum. 
To these centers anatomists, physiologists, and most 
especially psychologists, have traced the intellectual 
power by which he is enabled to lift himself in cogni- 
tion of his environment from his former delusions, into 
what now seems, by comparison, a state of very high 
correspondence with objective truth. But he still has his 
limitations beyond which it is impossible for him to 
ascend. These limitations are determined by his nerv- 
ous structure. 

The important thing to the individual is to have the 
complicated machinery upon which his mental life de- 
pends in the most complete working power. He should 
therefore make it a profound study. What ideas and 
abstractions it is capable of producing in his conscious- 
ness depend for their veracity very largely upon the view 
his own mentality takes of the machinery and its meth- 
od. The difference between true knowledge and delu- 
sion depends on this view. The old adage, "know thy- 
self," was largely intended to be confined to a study and 
control of the moral ideas of man. But since science 
has turned its attention to psychology it means a study 
of mental organizations and functions, for upon these 
depend a proper comprehension of natural ethics and 
natural religion. A few pages will therefore be devoted 
to my conception of the present status of psychological 
thought upon cognition and consciousness. 

Human knowledge consists, scientifically, of two es- 
sential elements, or rather one element polarized by 
mental analysis into two conditions : First, Actual ob- 
jectives in the environment, or realm outside the organ- 



knowledge; and its limitations 123 

ism; Second, Sensations received through the nervous 
system from these objectives, into the organism, and 
there co-ordinated into feelings. These feelings are 
again co-ordinated into abstractions and generalizations 
by higher neural centers. This co-ordination of sensa- 
tions into mental phenomena might be termed a third 
element of knowledge. But the whole mental process 
being, in my judgment, the result of molecular motion 
it is preferable to make the co-ordinating process a part 
only of the second element, beginning with sensations. 
Knowledge is the psychical phase denoting the physio- 
logical wealth of associated and systematized nervous 
structure in the encephelon. It is the culmination of 
sense impressions acting by molecular and chemical mo- 
tion through said nervous structure upon the motor cen- 
ters of the cerebrum. 

The aggregate of these feelings produced by molec- 
ular nervous motion in an organism, constitutes its 
mind. It will be perceived that this definition includes 
all organisms, having nervous systems. In fact, late ex- 
periments and investigations tend toward proving that 
the functions of nerve matter and those of ordinary 
muscular tissue, are in no way different in kind. * The 
only advantage the nerve tissue gives, is the greater 
rapidity with which it conveys sensations and produces 
responses or reactions. The nerve tissue in the human 
individual is so large a part of the organism that its 
activities include abstracting, discriminating, and com- 
paring the qualities and the meaning of sensations in a 
very much larger degree than in any of the lower forms 
of life. But the animal without nerves, and the mem- 
bers of the vegetable kingdom have a degree of mind. 



* "Physiology of the Brain," Jacques Loeb. 



124 PHYSICAL BASIS OF MIND AND MORALS 

Alfred Binet in his "Psychic Life of Micro-Organisms," 
says that Moebius recognizes that psychological life be- 
gins with living protoplasm. The pseudopodia there- 
fore have mind, although there is no trace of differenti- 
ated nerve structure. In this sense mind is coextensive 
with life. Hseckel says it is not confined even to the 
organic. The original atoms that make up the entire 
inorganic as well as organic nature, themselves have the 
function of motion, attraction and repulsion. To the ex- 
tent that these atoms respond to their environment, they 
have minds and knowledge. In short, all such respon- 
siveness, whether we call it attraction of gravitation, 
chemical affinity, molecular motion, or psychical phe- 
nomena, is simply mind in different forms. The degree 
or intensity of it depends upon the complexity of the 
aggregation of atoms producing the responsive motion. 
The atoms composing oxygen, when they leave their 
combination with hydrogen and rush to embrace the 
atoms composing potassium, so impetuously as to pro- 
duce fire on the surface of water, is not a conscious proc- 
ess in the sense of human consciousness, but the result 
— the phenomenon of incandescence and the formation 
of a new compound — is clearly as wonderful and as im- 
portant as the movement of similar atoms in the human 
brain, that result in only muscular motion, or what is 
called will power. In only a less degree also these chem- 
ical phenomena in the inorganic world have their sub- 
jective and objective phases. Units of inorganic sub- 
stance, or of organic compounds, combining in the course 
of evolution, or disintegrating in the process of dissolu- 
tion, appear to know, or to be conscious of the proper 
motion to make in harmony with the pending phenom- 
enon. This is their subjective side, and while it is very 
limited compared with our conceptions of the same phase 



KNOWLEDGE AND ITS LIMITATIONS 125 

in the human organism, yet we are compelled to recog- 
nize its existence. So it is intelligence when the compo- 
nent parts of a star brought by a ray of its light pass 
through a lens and form a spectrum informing the as- 
tronomer of the composition and conditions of a far off 
sun. These star components do this whether there is 
any astronomer to interpret them or not. They did it 
millions of years prior to the birth of Fraunhofer and 
Kirchhoff, who first properly conceived and interpreted 
their meaning. 

The term '"psychical" is limited to the activities of 
the human nervous system and the analogous phenom- 
ena in the inorganic are termed physical. But the cause 
and the effect in both activities are similar. If at the 
moment of the discovery of a great truth, like the attrac- 
tion of gravitation in the brain of Newton, the bony cov- 
ering of his cerebrum could be removed, and the most 
powerful miscroscope applied to the operation going on, 
nothing could be discovered but the isomeric molecular 
motion of the units of matter composing the brain. All 
mental phenomena, however obscure and however valu- 
able, are simply the product, so far as experiment can 
apply, of the interchange of matter and motion, going 
on in the nervous structure of the body. Particles of 
matter therein are constantly disintegrating and other 
particles forming new units. This activity accompanies 
every thought. The more rapid and intense the mental 
action, the quicker becomes the integration and disinte- 
gration. When the matter ceases to act, the differenti- 
ated energy called mental process stops. No one has ever 
been able to show by induction that any human mental 
phenomena have been produced except in the neural cen- 
ters of the organisms following and seemingly the result 
of physical pulsations. 



126 PHYSICAL BASIS OF MIND AND MORALS 

The mentality of living bodies below man is not dif- 
ferent in kind, but in degree. The difference is deter- 
mined by the diminished complexity of the nervous struc- 
ture in the lower animals. If it were possible to dissect 
the nervous systems of man and of a lower animal, and 
exhibit them apart from the body, upon manikins, so as to 
show them in all their ramifications, just as they lie in the 
organisms, they would show by comparison that the su- 
perior mentality of man results from the more complete 
and perfectly connected network of larger nerves, per- 
meating; every point of the human body and all connect- 
ing in the larger and more complex ganglion, called the 
brain (there are about 3,000,000,000 neurones) ; while the 
same system in lower animals is less complete, and more 
disconnected at its peripheral and other terminations, 
and less complex and of much smaller size in the ence- 
phelon; that the nerves and ganglionic centers, includ- 
ing the brain, are larger, more copious and complex just 
in proportion to the manifested mentality of the organ- 
ism. This would be the natural and effective method of 
teaching psychology and nerve physiology. 

"We shall regard all the operations of consciousness 
— all our sensations, all our emotions, and all our acts 
of will — as so many expressions of organic adaptations 
to our environment, an environment which we must re- 
member as social as well as physical." Psychology, by 
J. R. Angell, p. 7. 

"Comparative anatomy, comparative physiology and 
comparative psychology all converge upon another cog- 
nate principle, i. e., that the development of conscious- 
ness among various genera and species of the organic 
world has been parallel with the development of the nerv- 
ous system." Same, p. 13. 

"Development in the size and interconnections of the 



KNOWLEDGE AND ITS LIMITATIONS 127 

neurones goes on indefinitely, certainly with most per- 
sons up to forty years of age." Same, p. 23. 

"In the adult human being there are perhaps 3,000 
million neurones in various stages of development. 

"The elements of our knowledge ultimately reduce to 
sensory activities for which the immediate preconditions 
are specialized sense organs and a central nervous sys- 
tem. 

"The whole significance of the different stages in the 
cognitive operation is found in the devices they represent 
to further the efficiency of the motor responses which 
the organism is constantly obliged to make to its environ- 
ment. Memory, imagination and reasoning are thus 
simply half-way houses between stimuli and reactions 
which serve to permit the summoning of just those 
movements which the present situation demands, when 
interpreted in the light of the individual's past experi- 
ence." Page 256, Angell. 

As many sensations received by the organism, do not 
reach the highest and largest ganglion of the nervous 
system, the cerebrum, but are co-ordinated by the smaller 
ganglia, located in the various parts of the body, it fol- 
lows that the popular idea that the brain is the sole seat 
of the mind, is erroneous. The cerebrum is, however, 
the seat of what is known as intellectuality. 

"The intelligence, the higher affection processes and 
the compound voluntary actions are conditioned upon 
the integrity of the cerebral hemispheres." * The begin- 
ning of mind reaches back to the beginning of life. 

The nervous structure permeating all parts of the or- 
ganism and producing feelings in every part may account 



* Wundt, p. 284, "Principles Physiological-Psychology. 
Vol. I. 



128 PHYSICAL BASIS OF MIND AND MORALS 

for the evident failure of the earlier Phrenology to local- 
ize mentality in the brain alone. Every obvious feature 
of the organism is some expression of the mentality or 
character of the individual. And therefore to a certain 
degree, there is an adumbration of truth in the claims 
of the various advocates of special localizations that the 
shape of the head, the physiognomy, the palm of the 
hand, the hand writing, the voice, the walk, all show 
character. But the interpretation lies in the combination 
of all external peculiarities of the body. 

Phrenology assumed too strict a localization of func- 
tion in the cerebral centers. Every psychical phenomenon 
is not only the result of the sensory excitation of its ap- 
propriate center, but is contributed to by other centers 
connected by cross associative conduction paths. If the 
appropriate sensory center becomes more or less abro- 
gated from any cause, other centers in time vicariously 
assume and perform its function. Therefore the strict 
localizations of phrenology are illusive. 

The structural neural centers furnish fixed nodi in 
which functions operate in a very variable and unstable 
way. The processes, while of course determined by what 
are termed material structures, are so modified physio- 
logically by the association fibres of conduction crossing 
and mediating the sensory and motor centers, permeat- 
ing every part of the brain structure, that they must not 
be considered localized in the sense of the old phrenology. 
It is probable that the higher the locality of neural func- 
tion the more universal are the contributions by all parts 
of the conduction paths, beginning at the periphery, run- 
ning through the myel, the oblongata, mesencephelon, 
diencephelon, the cerebrum and ending in the various 
association centers of the prosencephelon. Psycholog- 
ical abstraction and generalization evidently occur there 



KNOWLEDGE AND ITS LIMITATIONS 129 

and they are the effects of the most complex functions 
of parts of the brain structure centering in the cerebrum 
by the cross association fibres. 

By bearing in mind that the above definition of 
knowledge gives it two essential co-existent or sequent 
parts, which might be called obverse and reverse sides, 
or better still, scientifically, the objective and subject- 
ive ; the absence of either of these essentials accounts for 
the unknown, while the two, acting normally psycho- 
logically together, constitute the known. It is obvious 
that if the first essential is absent, namely the objective, 
there can be no knowledge. So the absence of the sec- 
ond element, which may be defined as the correspondence 
between the internal nervous centers, and the external 
relation of things in the environment, (meaning by the 
environment, all causes of sensation) would surely re- 
sult in want of knowledge. The channels of this corre- 
spondence in higher animals are the five senses of sight, 
touch, hearing, tasting, and smelling. "Nothing is in 
our mind which has not been before in our senses" is 
an old saying. 

"Cognition, accordingly, may be characterized as a 
process of orientation in the world." * 

This correspondence of the exterior with the internal 
nerve centers, is the process of mind-making in its sim- 
plest terms in the new born infant. The infant at birth 
possesses the neural structure essential to this correspond- 
ence; but has no knowledge until experience establishes 
certain relations of space, time, quantity, and quality to 
which the mind can refer all successive sensations as 
they arise. Of course, the process of the evolution of 



* Dr. Cams, p. 359, "The Soul of Man.' 



130 THYSICAL BASIS OF MIND AND MORALS 

intellect or abstract generalization in man, is extremely 
complex and involved. This comes only with years of 
experience. The sensations that go to the complex pat- 
terns of the cerebrum, where the data of experience seem 
registered, that is, all the associative centers, are finally 
co-ordinated with these data of experience into memory, 
judgment, and will. It is not the function of the brain 
or central innervation to "store up" ideas or sensations. 
But a stimulation often repeated changes the more sta- 
ble molecules of the nerve cells to less stable ones and 
thus increases the potential work — the accumulation of 
what we call psychical processes. When this potential 
accumulation is released into actual work the product is 
the more stable molecules and the psychical phenomena 
called e. g. memory, or imagination. Thus there is al- 
ways going on in the nerve structure a change of the 
chemical composition of molecules resulting in ether po- 
tential or actual work. These physiological functions 
are the psychical phenomena of thought and feeling. 
Herbert Spencer says : — 

"An idea is the psychical side of what, on its physical 
side, is an involved set of nervous plexuses. That which 
makes possible the idea, is the pre-existence of these 
plexuses, so organized that a wave of molecular motion 
diffused through them will produce its psychical correl- 
ative, the components of the conception, in due order and 
degree." So that it follows, that the difference in ideas 
expressed by different organisms, depends upon the or- 
ganic structure of the nervous systems, and not upon a 
separate and distinct mental entity, that may be sup- 
posed to exist within the body. Mind is not matter nor 
spirit, therefore, but a condition and is psycho-physical. 
"Psychical" means the effect produced in the motion of 
molecules of nerve tissue in the body, in response to some 



KNOWLEDGE AND ITS LIMITATIONS 131 

incidence of force from without, such as light, heat, 
sound, etc. 

"We now know that each act of the will is as fatally 
determined by the organization of the individual and is 
dependent on the momentary condition of his environ^ 
ment as every other physical activity. The human will 
has no more foundation than that of the higher animals, 
from which it differs only in degree, not in kind." * 

The sensations received through the senses, from the 
objective, are the primary sources of all knowledge and 
mental development. But there must be hereditary 
structure in the organism whose function is the co-ordi- 
nation of these sensations into what we call knowledge. 
The quality and scope of the knowledge depends upon 
the structure. The quality and within limits, the quan- 
tity of the structure determines the limitations. It may 
with truth be said that the real difference between the 
mind of Shakespeare, for example, and the lowest man, 
lies not in education in the schools but simply in the dif- 
ference between the structure and quality of their nerv- 
ous system. And, really it is a very small difference in 
structure. 

When the child is born he is devoid of psychical ex- 
periences but has the physical structure of a nervous 
system organized for receiving impressions from the ob- 
jective environment through the organs of sense. These 
sensations have no meaning to him at first because the 
meaning can come to his brain only after experience has 
established or organized in his brain an associative mem- 
ory. This experience is slowly obtained by the exercise 
of his senses and especially that of touch. The reason 
why Helen Keller has succeeded in knowing the relation 



* "Riddle of the Universe," Haeckel. P. 131. 



132 PHYSICAL BASIS OF MIND AND MORALS 

of so many objective phenomena through the sense of 
touch almost alone is that she was born with a finely or- 
ganized nervous structure, which responded by the asso- 
ciative brain centers to sensations thus acquired. The 
auditory and optical centers existed in her brain the same 
as in the brains of those who have these peripheral sense 
organs. While these centers are not excited in the same 
way they would be by normal eyes and ears, yet they are 
not dormant by any means, in producing by association 
very much of the contents of her consciousness, her cor- 
respondence with environment. Her visual brain center 
is excited not by sight but by touch and thus she has a 
mental vision. 

Educational institutions can only place the neural 
structures of the student in contact with a superior en- 
vironment. In other words education consists or should 
consist of repeated presentation to the sensory nerves 
the most important objective truths with which the nerv- 
ous structure by constant practice can establish corre- 
spondence and build up a method and memory. This is* 
usually done by means of printed books containing the 
best ideas and by oral lectures conveying the most im- 
portant objective truths. Each student brain responds 
to such environment in proportion to the brain's quality 
and intensity. A certain tonicity is thus given to after 
psychical processes and these neural associative centers 
greatly strengthened, which produce what is popularly 
called reason, imagination and will. Memory consists 
of the readiness and power of the cross associative con- 
duction paths to recall and the will, the power to apply 
the images thus made, in all the psychical processes 
of after life. A child gradually attains a knowledge of 
likenesses and differences— all the relations that common 
objects bear to each other, by the constant use of sight, 



KNOWLEDGE AND ITS LIMITATIONS I33 

touch, hearing, taste and smell. Upon the experience 
thus obtained his powers of mentality in after life are 
gradually developed. The limit of these powers is fixed 
only by the physical complexity of his nervous structure 
— those plexuses through which ideas are formed. Each 
idea arises out of former ideas and gives birth to new 
ones. The structure and quality of the higher organism 
are the result of' what Darwin calls "Variation," brought 
about in some way, perhaps in various ways, and princi- 
pally by the laws of heredity not yet fully comprehended. 
The variation in structure that enables one man to com- 
prehend more quickly and truly the facts, and draw more 
accurately the correct conclusions from them, than an- 
other man is capable of doing, is what is called the better 
mind. The ampler this responsiveness, the greater the 
knowledge. The known to him, is just what his nervous 
structure enables him to absorb from the outer realm, 
and co-ordinate into ideas. The domain of the know- 
able, is just in proportion to the development of this cor- 
respondence. Thus structure and function go hand in 
hand. They are simultaneous in development. 

For instance, the colored children in schools are said 
to be quite as apt in the elementary studies as the white 
children, and in many cases, more readily absorb the 
teachings. But when the higher branches are reached, 
the white children usually leave behind the colored ones. 
This is explainable only on the theory of evolution, that 
function and structure proceed simultaneously. The an- 
cestry of the white child for innumerable generations 
have been surrounded by a civilization that necessarily 
resulted from a superior nervous system, and especially 
those higher qualities of the brain called intellect. What 
produced the variation of larger cerebrum and of better 
quality in the structure of the brain of the white man 



134 PHYSICAL BASIS OF MIND AND MORALS 

that eventually produced his superiority as a race, is 
largely an unsolved problem. But it is a well known 
anthropological fact. 

This fact of the simultaneity of structure and func- 
tion is the key to organic evolution. Because mentality 
or consciousness is a condition produced by structure and 
an awareness of relation. The superior form of the mat- 
ter making up the organism of the white race, and in- 
herited from generation to generation, must have come 
originally as a variation from such structure in his an- 
cestors by reason of the peculiar incidence of natural 
forces in his immediate environment, very likely by the 
superior sustentation, as Weissman believes, of the pro- 
creative cell. We infer, therefore, that the white race's 
superiority to the black race is the result of the natural 
selection of more numerous and important variations of 
neural structure occurring in that race brought about 
probably by a more highly complex environment. 

The energy retained in the organism that is not dis- 
sipated in its growth and development, is function. Psy- 
chical function is the continuing adaptation of the organ- 
ism to relations in its environment. It is the perception 
of phenomena by the continuity of images perpetually 
produced by the patterns of the brain. As this adaptation 
enlarges and becomes more complex, it is necessarily ac- 
companied by an enlarged and more complex structure 
of the matter of the organism. The two conditions are 
inseparable. 

Considering the first formation of a nerve in the 
course of biological evolution as the beginning of men- 
tality it was of course a variation favorable to the organ- 
ism in its struggle for existence. Natural selection 
would perpetuate this favorable variation and its prog- 
eny inheriting the variation would naturally be the ones 



KNOWLEDGE AND ITS LIMITATIONS 135 

to produce eventually another and still other variations 
of more complex nervous structure. The survival all the 
time of the best adapted or the fittest would end in a 
superior human psycho-physical unit. 

If this is the true theory of mental evolution, it be- 
comes at once apparent that the great variety of intel- 
ligence, or mentality we see in animal nature, has been 
caused by different degrees of activity or motion in nerv- 
ous structure taken on by the various organisms all 
through their long line of ancestors. 

For example two blades of grass almost side by side, 
will often show a great difference in growth, because 
the rapid growing one happens to be in contact at its 
roots with a richer food than its near neighbor, this 
richer food being a part of its environment, and imme- 
diately its function to take in more and more sustenta- 
tion grows simultaneously with its parallel development 
of root and stem structure, until it overshadows its puny 
neighbor, whose structure remains adapted only to its 
function to take in the smaller and less nutritious susten- 
tation. This puny blade lacks the environment of richer 
food of its more fortunate neighbor. 

The former produces large and vigorous seeds, in cor- 
respondence with its larger function of sustentation, that 
have the power to grow a new variety of grass, adapted 
to a wide range of the function of sustentation; while 
the seed of the weaker blade will barely germinate at 
all, and perhaps die out. But the difference between 
the successive generations of the two blades of grass, for 
all the time they may exist, is caused by the habits or 
functions begun by the two original blades, the differ- 
ence of function producing the visible difference of 
structure. Weissman's theory of heredity includes just 
this principle of variation. He seems to think variation 



136 PHYSICAL, BASIS OF MIND AND MORALS 

is the result of the larger difference in sustentation re- 
ceived by the biopher producing the variation. 

So with the higher organism called man. His su- 
perior mentality has been evolved as part of and simul- 
taneously with his superior physical organism. His 
nervous organization, composing the avenues by which 
molecular motion, producing that complicated and ob- 
scure aggregation called the mind, is made possible, is 
the material or physical registration of all the previous 
structure producing the habits, the peculiar line of ac- 
tion; in other words, the function, of all his ancestry 
back to the beginning of cell formation, from which 
originally his life began. Every successive organism of 
this ancestry inherited the essential structure and func- 
tion of its predecessor. Occasionally one would show a 
variation favorable to its struggle for existence, which 
also became inherited, and the added function of this 
variation became also inheritable, and thus the present 
human organisms on this globe, are simply the organized 
registration of the habits and peculiarities of all of their 
ancestry, back to the beginning of life. The process has 
undoubtedly been exceedingly slow. 

No two members of the same species even, are alike, 
because no two have occupied just the same space, and 
therefore could not have exactly the same correspond- 
ence with the relation of things or objects in the en- 
vironment. This difference of correspondence with en- 
vironment constitutes the difference in species as well as 
the individual varieties, natural selection having perpe- 
tuated the favorable variations. 

Nervous structures may be compared to an Aeolian 
harp, which produces beautiful music when the motion of 
the air strikes its chords. If the correct arrangement of 
the strings exists, the harmony is produced. The quality 



knowledge; and its limitations 137 

of music depends upon the structure. The higher the 
structure of the instrument, the higher the class of mu- 
sic. The same air blowing on different structures of 
harps, produces entirely different classes of music. So 
the quality of thought in man, is determined by the struc- 
ture of the nervous system. If the structure adapted 
to respond to the higher and finer qualities of sensations 
transforming these into percepts and concepts is not 
there, there will be either no response or an abortive or 
inharmonious psychical reaction. This high structure 
was in Shakespeare, and in fact, in all the great think- 
ers, and was so responsive to the most acute and truth- 
ful sensations coming to it from the highest harmony of 
objective relationship in the environment, that the 
thoughts Shakespeare produced are among the most 
satisfying that have been perpetuated in written language. 
Why did Newton see the significance of the falling 
apple, while other men, with brains and nerves appar- 
ently like his, failed to make such an important dis- 
covery? It must be, because there was a small struc- 
ture (a variation) of grey cortex in his brain, lacking 
in other heads, that responded to the sensation coming 
from the falling apple through the optic nerve upon the 
optic center forming a series of successive images, im- 
possible to the other brains. These were memory 
images of innumerable past sensations of falling bodies 
and of astronomical bodies revolving in apparent circles. 
The fusing of these images on the brain cortex produced 
perception. The image of Kepler's three laws was one 
of these percepts. The result was the concept or ab- 
straction of Kepler's three laws and the great principle 
of the attraction of gravitation. This might be the an- 
swer to Huxley's question put to himself upon reading 
for the first time Darwin's "Origin of Species," "Why 



138 PHYSICAL BASIS OF MIND AND MORALS 

could not I have drawn the same conclusions from the 
same well known facts?" 

How this peculiar structure of grey matter came into 
Newton's head and not into other heads, is the moment- 
ous question. But I suspect if the habits and environ- 
ment of his ancestors could be minutely traced, this pe- 
culiar variation, or differentiation, of brain structure 
could be easily accounted for on the principle of evolu- 
tion. It would be exceedingly interesting and most in- 
structive, if we could trace back the line of man's evolu- 
tion and discover the causes of the variations in the or- 
ganic structure that first started the lower order man- 
ward. But such speculation would give too free play to 
conjecture and imagination. It is beyond the reach of 
scientific induction. Some author has said no new cells 
are added to the brain between birth and death, hence 
a superior structure must have been inherited from his 
ancestors and other important variations must have ap- 
peared first in his own nervous structure at birth. What 
we commonly call greatness is most likely produced in 
the same way. Classical literature and scientific dis- 
covery are the results of high structure responding to 
high environment. Or the high quality of the brain 
cortex produces an image of obscure qualities of objec- 
tive things that common brains cannot produce. Just as 
the fine French mirror reflects a more perfect image than 
does the common mirror made of defective glass. 

The Anglo-Saxon brain will respond to a very com- 
plex environment, to which the nervous system of a de- 
scendent of a long line of African ancestry is incapable 
of responding. Hence the difference between the two 
in the capacity of receiving higher education. But in 
those habits that have been common to the ancestry of 
both, such as sustentation, procreation, physical activity 



KNOWLEDGE AND ITS LIMITATIONS 139 

and endurance, and all the ordinary activities, there is 
but little difference. So little seems to be known about 
the law of inheritance, that it is perhaps better to say 
that the habits peculiar to an individual are not inherited, 
but the structure that produces race habits is, and when 
that structure is placed in correspondence with the same 
environment of its ancestors, it will respond in the same 
way, and develop the same habits, the variations pro- 
ducing new correspondences unknown to the ancestors. 

The higher functions cannot exist without the higher 
structure; and it is obvious to the casual observer that 
the nervous structure of the African is very much in- 
ferior to that of the Indo-European. Anatomists say 
that the sutures of the African skull solidify earlier in 
life than those of the white man. Is this significant of 
earlier maturity and consequently arrested development? 

The paucity of our language in words fitly to express 
the shades of scientific meaning is illustrated by the fact 
that the definition of knowledge is practically the defini- 
tion of life, evolution and all natural phenomena and are 
given frequently in the same language, viz : the continual 
readaptation of the subjective and the objective. Not only 
the physical, but what is called psychical and spiritual, 
are all caused by one universial force. The true defini- 
tion of one is the sufficient explanation of all. 

The cognitive process is the operation in unison of 
the entire psychical device. The same truth will apply 
to the whole human organism, and what we have been 
heretofore calling the attributes of it. The embryo, espe- 
cially its nervous structure, is at first indefinite, incoher- 
ent, irresponsive. It grows by the absorption or inte- 
gration of matter from its environment. It could not 
survive without this correspondence with its sustenta- 
tion. The absorbed matter builds up into a definite com- 



140 PHYSICAL BASIS OF MIND AND MORALS 

plex structure, the bones, the muscles, and the nerves. 
The different parts of the body retain certain motion or 
energy, but in different forms. But these different forms 
of motion, which are called function, are in their origin 
and nature all the same. The motion of the muscle is 
simply the dissipation of a part of its matter, and the 
renewal of it, by integration of the substance constantly 
taken into the stomach and lungs. In the same way the 
function of the brain is performed, whether it is the ex- 
ercise of what we call memory, which is the reproduc- 
tion of former presentations, or the production of the 
highest thought in the formation of ideas. It is only a 
change in the form of the matter composing the nerve 
tissue, and renewing the destroyed form by the susten- 
tation taken from the objective environment by the stom- 
ach and lungs, or in other words, molecular motion. 

The common forms of muscular motion are so much 
slower and less complex, they are so much more ap- 
parent to our dull senses than the rapid mobile action 
of the grey matter of the cerebrum, that it is not sur- 
prising that to the latter is attributed a supernatural 
cause, and to the former only a natural one. But the causes 
are the same and only natural. A scientific study of the 
power and effect of light, heat, or electricity will con- 
vince the student that the operations of the mind are not 
exceptional in either method or result, nor practically 
different from other natural phenomena. 

The connection between the psychical and the phys- 
ical is no more mysterious than the connection between 
physical phenomena. For example, when two simple 
substances, oxygen and hydrogen, come together in cer- 
tain proportions and form water — a thing entirely dif- 
ferent from either of its elements. I acknowledge that 
the processes in the human brain called human eonsci- 



knowledge: and its limitations 141 

ousness : — that peculiar condition of the human organism 
by which it is differentiated from the rest of phenomena 
as subjective, while the rest are objective, is an unknown 
relationship, yet to be scientifically defined. But so is 
the principle of chemical attraction and the attraction of 
gravitation. In fact the reality of any phenomenon is 
unknown. 

The logical sequence to a knowledge of the limita- 
tions of the human brain, is that scientifically we must 
test every proposition presenting itself to the brain by 
experience. If it cannot be examined empirically, if its 
components are not such objective truths as come through 
our senses, it is only a waste of time and strength to 
pursue it. There are sufficient life problems lying within 
the reach of inductive investigation to occupy our whole 
time and strength. These are also the most essential 
problems. In other words, given what our senses per- 
ceive in the universe and what they may be made to 
comprehend by further investigation by scientific meth- 
ods, man may be able to place his organism in such na- 
tural adjustment with his cosmic environment as to get 
out of existence all the possible benefits compatible with 
his individual and racial relationships. Whatever is 
purely subjective is unknown and most likely unknow- 
able. 

We have no consciousness of processes in the brain. 
The sense impressions are transformed images of real 
things objectively considered. Any irritation of a peri- 
pheral or sense organ is not felt in the brain, but the cen- 
tral organ sees, hears, feels, tastes or smells it at the loca- 
tion in the environment of the object producing the irri- 
tation. A pain is felt not in the neural center, nor in 
the threads of the nervous matter conveying the sensa- 
tion, but at the point of the organism where the recep- 



142 rHYSICAI, BASIS OF MIND AND MORALS 

tive nerve terminates. This may be at any point on the 
external or internal surface of the body, but never in the 
ganglionic centers, nor in the motor nerves. Hence the 
neural molecular process by which all psychical phe- 
nomena are produced are not part of consciousness. 

This process is thinking, and might be called the 
subjective ego. But we know nothing about it, consci- 
ousness being a condition produced by it, but it is no 
part or state of consciousness. When an arm is am- 
putated and one of the bisected afferent nerves is irri- 
tated at the outer end left in the body the feeling is not 
at the point irritated, but at the former peripheral termi- 
nation in the detached part of the arm or. hand. So that 
consciousness is not an objective thing existing in the 
body, but a condition produced by objective things 
through and by the neural structure, which is also an 
objective thing. The cerebrum of the human being, or 
part of it can be removed without pain. But its removal 
entire would destroy consciousness, although life and 
motor response would still continue, at least for some 
time. Hence we know that the processes producing con- 
sciousness proceed in the cerebrum and that they are the 
only processes in the organism which are not objective 
to our senses. They are then the subjective ego not of 
Des Cartes and the idealists, for his was a soul entity and 
if they should be considered the self because they do the 
thinking, then we are not' conscious of self. 

We can imagine a time, perhaps long ages from now, 
when the structure of the majority of brains will have 
so improved as to respond more readily to complex and 
obscure phenomena, and when the realm of delusion and 
illusion will have faded away, and with it will have de- 
parted all fear, idle wonder, and superstition. Mankind 
will not then be looking for the pot of gold at the foot 



knowledge: and its limitations 143 

of the rainbow; nor for Christmas gifts from a bearded 
hobgoblin. Man will not then spend his life fleeing 
from a horned spirit of evil, "A prince of the power of 
darkness." Then he will have the ability and can give 
the time that is now spent by him in pursuit of an "ignis 
fatuus," the unknowable, to the study of the natural laws 
of his being and the founding thereon of a code of ethics 
adapted to his perceptible welfare in this world. His eth- 
ical code will not then be based on the approbation or re- 
probation of some one outside of himself, but upon the 
wants of his own organism, and his relation to his fellow- 
men, and all other things in his environment, as taught by 
the never changing laws of Nature. Especially will his 
actions be good or bad, under this code, as they benefit 
or detract from the welfare of the race to which he be- 
longs. He will then do right for right's sake, not be- 
cause the supposed wrong is proscribed under penalty. 

Science tells him that the most important problem of 
life for him to solve, is how best to obtain and maintain 
the amplest correspondence of his organism in all its 
heterogeneity, with his wonderful complex environment, 
that is as wide as the universe. This means health, hap- 
piness, and longevity. He will then learn that a defect 
in this correspondence is disease, which will prematurely 
and unnecessarily lead, if not corrected by knowledge of 
natural laws, to that perfect equilibrium called death, 
when the law of his former evolution will be reversed. 
There will then occur an integration of motion and a 
concomitant disintegration of matter, when the organic 
will revert to its original inorganic elements. 



CHAPTER VI 



THE PHENOMENAL EGO 



There seem to be just two sensuous conditions in the 
objective apparition, viz: space and resistance. The 
space is extension, and resistances are the masses of mat- 
ter. It is probable that these in their ultimate reality 
may be one. Accompanying these are the sensations of 
color and brightness. These make impression upon sight 
alone. From the standpoint of the mass called the earth 
to which our bodies are attached by the attraction of 
gravitation we perceive first the earth with its atmos- 
phere, next the sun, the moon; and the stellar bodies as 
points of light in space. The earth, being our abiding 
place, presents a remarkably varied contour of surface, 
part land and a large part water. On the surface of 
the land and in the water are innumerable forms of what 
we call life, both vegetable and animal. This habitat of 
man is a globe moving rapidly through space and is 
never twice in the same locality. From the sun proceeds 
light, heat and electricity. Telescopes and spectroscopes 
reveal the shapes and components of the stellar bodies 
to be the same as those of the earth. All matter is in 
motion and all space seems filled with matter and mo- 
tion, either in mass or in what is called ether. It is un- 
necessary to pursue the description further, because the 
perpetual apparation coming to the senses of each human 
being is well known and a thing of every day occurence. 
It is so common that the most of mankind cease to note 

144 



the: phenomenal ego 145 

it as a whole, while the scientist who makes it his life's 
occupation to investigate its phenomena is in touch with 
manifestations only and wondering at its grandeur and 
meaning but entirely incapable of penetrating behind the 
phenomena. Yet he has analyzed its appearance suf- 
ficiently to have formulated certain scientific hypotheses 
concerning the constant interchange of matter and mo- 
tion in producing new forms. One hypothesis is that all 
motion is uniform in its laws and all mass composed of 
the aggregation of identical atoms, or perhaps, only cen- 
ters of energy. Whatever the form of matter en masse, 
whether in what is called the inorganic or the organic, 
it is undergoing a constant change and that change is 
brought about in every instance by the same force or 
energy, while no part of the matter nor any of the mo- 
tion is lost. Two hypotheses result, viz: the conserva- 
tion of energy and the indestructibility of matter. It 
also means that however different in appearance, the in- 
numerable forms of matter may be, yet all are com- 
posed of the same ultimate atoms and are absolutely de- 
pendent upon the same motion or energy to preserve 
them in their different forms from moment to moment. 
This is the "Persistence of Force." It means also that 
however complex the combination of atoms and however 
various, obscure or impenetrable the retained motion of 
any mass may be, yet it can be only a differentiation of 
the universal unity of these elements and is in insepar- 
able and dependent correspondence with all other mat- 
ter and motion. Therefore there is no separate and 
distinct entity. Whatever may seem as such, is only 
a moving equilibrium, whose balanced status at any 
moment absolutely depends upon its integration or dis- 
sipation of so much matter and so much motion from the 
fixed quantity in the universe. This, as I understand it, 



146 PHYSICAL BASIS OF MIND AND MORALS 

is the generally accepted theory of physicists. Physicists 
are also rapidly concluding that matter and motion are 
only two phases of one phenomenon and that the ultimate 
ion is merely an electric discharge. Keeping in view 
these general principles, I will say something in this 
chapter regarding the human organism as a part of the 
phenomena of the perpetual apparition, the Ego and its 
environment. I believe it was Descartes who first used 
the expression "Cogito, ergo, sum." 

The term Ego was a definitition of the mind or the 
soul. Descartes says in the "Discourse on Method" p. 
171 Universal Classics Library, in the volume devoted 
to Descartes' Meditation and Philosophy, "1 attentively 
examined what I was, and as I observed that I could 
suppose that I had no body and that there was no world 
nor any place in which I might be, but that I could not 
therefore suppose that I was not, I thence concluded that 
I was a substance whose sole essence or nature consists 
only in thinking and which that it may exist, has need 
of no place, nor is dependent on any material thing; so 
that "I" that is to say, the mind, by which I am what 
I am, is wholly distinct from the body and is more easily 
known than the latter and is such that although the lat- 
ter were not, it would still continue to be all that it is." 

Not being able to conceive of thinking without a 
body, or that any part of the organism could exist with- 
out a material abiding place I much prefer the modern 
theory of evolution, and instead of beginning with Des- 
cartes' idea of an Ego as a starting point for universal 
knowledge or absolute truth, beginning with the neb- 
ula, where nature must have started, and tracing from 
that the course of cosmic evolution to the present state 
of physics and psychics. This is the better method. If 
man is a product of evolution, which I understand is quite 



the: phenomenal ego 147 

universally accepted by scientists and intelligent men, 
then he must be only a differentiated form of natural 
phenomena. Therefore I prefer to consider him in his 
bodily form and will consider the Ego to be the whole 
individual organism. It is a psychophysical organism. 
The psychical and the physical are inseparable and 
correspond with the objective phenomena of matter and 
motion. They are undoubtedly only differentiations of 
the same basic unit of cosmic energy, whether this unit 
may be the atom or the ion or an electric explosion or 
something beyond the comprehension of the ego. The 
Ego as thus denned appears to be an entity to a casual 
observer, whose retained psychical and physical motions 
are not dependent on any connections they might have 
with the rest of the universe. But to the penetrating 
eye of science it is a heterogeneous organism (see the 
chapter on Evolution where the development from the 
Nebula is given) whose specialized organs are co-ordi- 
nated parts of the general mass of matter and whose 
functions are determined by their connection with the 
persistence of force. It is similar to a wheel in com- 
plex machinery whose revolving motion depends on the 
connection of its cogs with those of other wheels. What 
we call human life then seems to be a correspondence 
between an Ego, or human body, and an environment 
with which, in order to maintain its continuance, it is 
necessary to remain in touch. Death is a discontinuance 
of this correspondence and I am afraid that the "I" of 
Descartes might not then be able to think, having no 
environment from which to receive its sensations, that 
is, having nothing about which to think. 

As each human being then is an Ego, who has to 
some degree a different environment from every other 
it will be interesting and perhaps profitable to endeavor 



US PHYSICAL BASIS OF MIND AND MORALS 

to reason out the nature of this peculiar relationship as 
a phenomenon. C. Lloyd Morgan in his article "Psy- 
chology and the' Ego" in Vol. 10 "No. I of "The Monist" 
says "The first decisive step in the analysis of the com- 
plex web of phenomena is the polarization of the data 
of experience into their objective and subjective aspects." 
That is, notwithstanding the monism of phenomena, the 
unity of all phases of psychical activity, yet in order to 
study its nature, we must analyze its components, or at 
first divide it into two parts. The subjective aspect is 
the Ego's end of phenomena. It is the morphology of 
the energy that the laws of nature aggregate in the in- 
divudial organism. Dr. Paul Carus says, "Every mind 
is the concentrated effect of the whole cosmos upon one 
special part of the cosmos, not as it takes place in one 
moment, but as it has taken place in a definite and con- 
tinuous period up to date." For convenience of study 
it is divided into two parts. One physical, by which the 
life of the organism is maintained, the other psychical, 
by which what is called "consciousness" is produced. 
In reality, they are both one. The physical phenomena 
are sustentation by which development and growth are 
produced, excretion and procreation. The psychical 
occur through a peculiar or differentiated structure of 
the physical and the resulting consciousness, or knowl- 
edge, or awareness seems to be a condition, whose real 
nature psychologists are now studying and about which 
there is some difference of opinion. The process of the 
physical is termed physiological, and the psychical, psy- 
chological. But this distinction is only one of ideal clas- 
sification for the purpose of study and may not have any 
real basis in the natural phenomena themselves. For 
the material structure of the Ego includes not only the 
bones, muscles and vital organs, but also the nervous 



THE PHENOMENAL EGO 149 

structure as well, through, or by means of which all the 
psychical phenomena occur. This nervous structure is 
only differentiated protoplasm of which the whole body 
is formed. Therefore psychology is frequently termed 
a branch of physiology. Jacques Loeb in his "Physiology 
of the Brain" contends that in function there is no dif- 
ference between muscular and nervous structure, except 
in facility of movement of its component molecules. It 
seems the further experiment is carried the greater the 
evidence for unity, in both function and structure. The 
five senses attributed to the body may perhaps in ulti- 
mate analysis be reduced to one, the primal, from which 
all the others have been evolved. That is touch. Xow, 
premising that the Ego, as I define it, contains more of 
the elements of the objective than of the subjective, and 
that physiology will and does explain the great bulk of 
the apparent phenomena of it a few thoughts given to 
the psychology of the Ego let us hope will disclose some 
of its methods. A thorough investigation of the make up 
of this Ego reveals that these sense impressions are pro- 
duced either directly by or by means of what is called a 
nervous system containing about 3,000,000,000 neurones, 
permeating the whole body, having its external termina- 
tions so arranged as to carry with much more rapidity 
than the other structure of the body can do, certain ob- 
jective sensations from the outside of the body, and also 
from those parts of the Ego objective to the senses from 
within it, that is, from all its objective organs and func- 
tions, to certain internal terminations of this nervous 
system called ganglia or neural centers. The largest 
ganglion of this system is the encephalon, or central or- 
gan, and is made up of innumerable strands of nerves 
so interwoven as to appear a solid mass of nervous mat- 
ter. By reason of its extreme mobility this great mass 



150 PHYSICAL BASIS OF MIND AND MORALS 

of nerve tissue, permeating every point of the organ- 
ism, is in perpetual motion. It is probable that this 
isomeric molecular motion constitutes the consciousness 
of the Ego, keeping it in perpetual unity with the same 
energy or force producing perpetual molar motion in the 
environment — the two being differentiated phases of 
"the persistence of force." Or I will say that neural 
molecular motion produces a relation between objects. — 
This relation is Consciousness. "But consciousness is only 
an epiphenomenon, superadded to cerebral activity and 
capable of disappearing without the corresponding nerve 
process being altered." * But by whom is it superadded 
unless by the brain itself? 

It appears that whenever there is an impression made 
on any of the organs of the senses, it is conveyed in- 
wardly along the receptive nerve by what is called iso- 
meric molecular motion, that is, there is a re-arrange- 
ment of the little invisible particles called molecules, 
which make up the substance of the nerve, through its 
whole length, or through a sufficient length to convey 
the impression to one of the ganglia. These ganglia, 
composed of yet more mobile matter than the nerve 
threads of conveyance, add to, co-ordinate, and discharge 
the motion along effector or motor nerves and thus pro- 
duce the phenomena of bodily motion and all the phenom- 
ena called psychical. The ganglia acting, apparently, like 
galvanic batteries of electrical energy, send the impres- 
sion, if need be, by the molecular motion of motor nerves 
to exhaust themselves in muscular action. But, if the 
sensations are of a nature to require brain action instead 
of muscular action, then the sensuous energy coming 
from the environment seems to be registered in the 
wonderful mazes of the central nervous organ called the 

* Psychology of Reasoning, Binet, p. 126. 



THE PHENOMENA^ EGO 151 

brain, until it assumes one of the phases of psychic phe- 
nomena called perception, image, emotion, conception, 
reason, memory, or will. The individual sensations are 
co-ordinated with each other by the patterns of nerves 
in the brain and this produces generalizations and . ab- 
stractions. The whole is physiological in process, while 
the result is psychological. Thus every so-called mental 
operation is produced by impressions coming from the 
environment by way of the senses into the nervous struc- 
ture and then further producing a resulting molecular 
motion which produces the psychical phenomena we be- 
hold in man. 

It is all apparently the result of natural force, the 
persistence of force acting along the line of least resist- 
ance. I notice that Max Miiller says that if mind is to 
be the name of the work, "what is to be the name of the 
worker?" I take it this is force, that does the physical 
working everywhere in nature. But there is no neces- 
sity to name the worker. If some personality or entity 
outside of nature itself does the working everywhere, 
then this same personality does it in the brain, but not 
if evolution is true. Natural cause and effect only are 
supposable in evolution. Max Miiller calls it the monon 
or the Ego. Now for monon or Ego suppose we sub- 
stitute molecular motion and make that the worker, or 
if that should be called the working, then call the worker 
the persistence of force. We shall then have both the 
working and the worker, natural cause and effect. This 
simplifies it as much as the appellation of mind and Ego. 
But the fact is human knowledge never penetrates be- 
yond the working and in the utility of it to the welfare 
of, man, the working is the thing to know. I think with 
Miiller that the old subdivisions are too cumbersome and 
complex. 



152 PHYSICAL BASIS OF MIND AND MORALS 

"The complicated apparatus which had been postu- 
lated by most philosophers for the performance of 
thought in its various spheres of manifestation must make 
room for much plainer machinery. Instead of intuition, 
intellect, understanding, mind, reason, genius, judgment, 
and all the rest, we want really nothing but a self-con- 
scious monon capable of changing all that is supplied by 
the senses into percepts, concepts, and names." It seems 
to me that the plainest machinery for this purpose is 
what we see in the process, that is, the "nerve structure." 
That has been evolved and this conclusion will comply 
with both simplicity and evolution. "Self" is the organ- 
ized human body with its brain and nerves maintained 
by the motion of its component- atoms as a part of 
the living Cosmos. Its retained motion is a part of the 
general energy, or persistence of force. A "self-consci- 
ous monon" does not exist. The change of sensations 
into concepts is done by nerve molecular motion. Prof. 
Joseph Le Conte says, "If the brain of a living, thinking 
man were exposed to the scrutiny of an outside observer, 
with absolutely perfect senses, all that he would or could 
possibly see would be molecular motion, physical and 
chemical." * Even sleep, which is the period of rest to 
the functions of the nervous system, is caused by the 
contraction of the blood vessels of the brain, and the en- 
largement of the peripheral termination of the circula- 
tory system, thus lessening the activity of the molecular 
motion which pertains to psychic phenomena. The re- 
sulting inactivity of the senses is sleep. It is often as- 
serted that the mind, as some call the functions of the 
nerve tissue, never sleeps. One proof of this is the sup- 
posed mystery of dreams. I think that dreams do not 
come in profound sleep — that is, when the molecules of 

* Work called "Evolution." 



the; phenomenal, ego 153 

the nerve tissue which produce the psychical phenomena 
are at rest. It is probable that those nerves that sustain 
the physiological function of replacing the destroyed 
molecules of nerve structure may be as active in pro- 
found sleep as during the waking hours. Dreams seem 
to be produced during the decreasing activity of the 
molecular motion of the psychical patterns of the brain 
in process of going to sleep, or by the nascent motion of 
the same molecules in the process of waking. At these 
two opposite periods, the sensations coming from the 
environment are not operative, but the faint and imper- 
fect representations of former sensations are produced 
by the feeble movements of the molecules, not vigorous 
and true as when first presented in the waking hours, 
but modified and never an exact copy of the original. 
Thus dreams seem to be of different degrees of truthful- 
ness. As the brain approaches sleep, the first dreams 
are likely to be. the most vivid and representative^ but as 
sense activity gradually declines, they become fainter and 
more fantastic and at last incoherent. This order is re- 
versed in the period of awakening, the last dreams that 
precede the final opening of the avenues of real sensa- 
tions coming from real objects in the realm outside of the 
Ego, being more definite and true to the reality than 
those preceding. In this sense dreams are in line with 
other psychical phenomena, having physiological marks. 
Profound sleep may be prevented by various abnormali- 
ties acting on the senses, such as indigestible food in the 
stomach, aromas coming in excess to the nostrils, or un- 
usual pressure on any part of the body. In such cases 
there is not profound sleep and the molecular nervous 
motions are more or less active, producing correspond- 
ing representation of modified forms of previous sensa- 
tions and ideas. 



154 PHYSICAL BASIS OF MIND AND MORALS 

The assertion that the function of the nervous struc- 
ture as above set forth produces consciousness includes, 
of course, the process of thought. Thoughts, or the proc- 
ess of forming ideas, are accompanied by the same ob- 
jective physiological marks that characterize all psychi- 
cal processes, they follow molecular motion. It seems 
trite to make this assertion in view of the fact that the 
bodily movements following sensations imply thinking. 
Consciousness is a condition which is best described by 
calling it a correspondence between the brain structure 
and relations in the objective. The Century Dictionary 
says, the word consciousness is derived from the Latin 
conscius — knowing, aware. Therefore it is the aggre- 
gate of knowledge or awareness possessed by the Ego. 
This knowledge of course, includes the perception of 
self as I define it objectively. The term subjective is as 
a thing in itself artificial because the Ego, including con- 
sciousness, as far as it can be scientifically studied is ob- 
jective to the senses. The physiology and anatomy of 
the body is perceptible to sight, hearing, touch, taste and 
smell. Perhaps touch is most largely the sense of self 
feeling. Pleasure is the harmonious touch of all func- 
tion. Touch is not confined to the ends of our fingers, 
but is an all-pervasive sense located in some degree in 
every surface both inside and outside, and pain, which 
is the alarm call from the outposts of the neural fortress 
that an attack of a destructive kind is being made, ac- 
centuates the great importance of the sense of touch to 
the organism. Touch exists wherever there is living 
nerve. It is the all-pervasive and primal sense. What 
is subjective is the opposite pole to the objective in psy- 
chical phenomena. For example, the voices heard by 
Joan of Arc were entirely subjective, because they were 
private to her hearing. They were heard by no one else. 



THE PHENOMENAL EGO 155 

We are self conscious to the extent that self, or the 
Ego, is objective to the receptive nerves and ganglia. 
This is evident, for whatever part of the body, or its 
functions, makes impressions on the senses is certainly 
objective. But the method of conversion in the brain of 
sensation into abstraction or generalization is not ap- 
parent. Therefore whatever part of brain processes in 
the Ego is not objective is unknown to us. This may 
be the process of connecting the perceiver with the thing 
perceived, or rather the thing's relationship with other 
things. It is unknown why the same plexus of nerve 
tissue at once receives and perceives, or of what the re- 
action to a sensation beyond the chemical action of the 
molecules really consists. The simple emotions, such as 
fear, hatred, affection, self-feeling, and sexual emotions, 
are manifested by objective physiological marks in the 
organs that display the phenomena. The physical 
changes constitute the emotion. In his address to the 
Physiological Section of the British Association at its 
meeting in 1904 at Cambridge, Prof. C. S. Sherrington 
made the following statement * : "In the integrative 
function of the nervous system the unit mechanism 
is the reflex. The chain of conduction in the reflex 
is a nervous arc running from a receptor organ to an 
effector organ, e. g. from a sense organ to a limb muscle. 
The characteristic of the synoptic system is that the chain 
consists of neurones jointed together in such a way that 
conductivity seems possible only in one direction." He 
says that "the receptive neurone conducts only the im- 
pulses generated at its own point and other receptive 
points cannot use it. But at the terminus of every re- 
flex arc we find a final neurone, the ultimate conductive 



* See the October, 1904, number of the Popular Science 
Monthly. 



156 PHYSICAL BASIS OF MIND AND MORALS 

link to an effector organ, gland or muscle. "It does not 
subserve exclusively impulses generated at one single 
receptive source alone, but receives impulses from many 
receptive sources situate in many and various regions of 
the body." Thus, "Reflex arcs arising in manifold sense 
organs can pour their influence into one and the same 
muscle. A limb muscle is the terminus ad quern of nerv- 
ous arcs arising not only in the right eye, but in the left, 
not only in the eyes, but in the organs of smell and hear- 
ing, not only in these but in the geotropic labyrinth, in. 
the skin and in the muscles and joints of the limb itself 
and of the other limbs as well. Its motor nerve is a path 
common to all these." 

I consider a system of conductivity so eleborate as 
this with functions so complex and far reaching as be- 
ing sufficient in itself to produce all the phenomena of 
psychic action as we feel and perceive them in our own 
bodies, and as we perceive them in the bodies of others. 
I will quote further from this able address of Prof. Sher- 
rington's. "The conducting paths in the great central 
organ are arranged in a particular pattern. The success 
achieved in unraveling of the conductive patterns of the 
brain and cord is shown by the diagrams furnished by 
the works of such investigators as Edinger, Exner," and 
others. "Knowledge of this kind stands high among 
the neurological advances of our time. But the pattern 
of the web of conductors is not really immutable. Func- 
tionally its details change from moment to moment. In 
any active part it is a web that shifts from one pattern 
to another, from a first to a second, from a second to a 
third, then back perhaps to the first and then to a fourth 
and so on backwards and forwards. Locally the patterns 
are in constant flux of back and forward change." He 
closes the address by saying, "If we regard the nervous 



the phenomenal ego 157 

system of any higher organism from the broad point of 
view, a salient feature of its architecture is the follow- 
ing: At the commencement of every reflex arc is a re- 
ceptive neurone extending from the receptive surface to 
the central nervous organ." Introspection means the 
turning of the senses from external objects inward to 
observe the workings of our own organs, including the 
brain. But we fail to perceive the method of thought in 
this way. Whatever we do perceive in this way is self 
consciousness. One could observe the motion of the 
molecules of the brain of another body, but this would be 
purely objective and would not be self consciousness, but 
only circumstantial evidence that the same phenomena 
occur in the observer. It is good evidence that the same 
thing occurs in our own brains which are similarly con- 
structed. The study of anatomy and physiology is en- 
tirely objective, but so must be the study of psychology 
as the study of the relation existing between our own 
conscious states and the relation of things in the en- 
vironment. The question is how the excitation of a re- 
ceptive nerve by an incident force proceeding from ob- 
jects in the environment produces in us a state of con- 
sciousness and the particular forms of psychical phe- 
nomena called conception, reasoning, memory and will. 
There seem to be no real distinct departments of these 
functions, but they are modifications of the general psy- 
chical method. Beyond what is objective in the method 
there can be no knowledge. We can only cognize the 
physiological marks accompanying the phenomena. The 
manifestations are objective. Therefore, if we confine 
the Ego to a thinking process and call that self, then we 
have no self consciousness. But if we call the whole 
body the ego then we are self conscious of the objective 
part of the Ego. 



158 PHYSICAL BASIS OF MIND AND MORALS 

Notwithstanding all the metaphysical reasoning upon 
the nature of the subjective I cannot see that any ad- 
vance has been made toward differentiating it from the 
objective, for if it is a thing in itself, an entity, having 
real existence then it is objective. I know it is answered 
by some psychologists — that- we are more conscious of 
our subjective existence than we are of the objective. 
This is true provided self consciousness is defined as the 
knowledge of ourselves that is objective to the senses. 
It seems to me that what we know of ourselves comes 
through our senses as the objective, either in the shape 
of direct sensations from our anatomy and physiology, 
or by inference from what we observe in other homolo- 
gous organisms, and if there is anything else left after all 
the objective factors of the Ego are eliminated, it is 
something of which we are not conscious and about which 
we are not able to postulate anything. The inner world 
of the Ego may be said to be the phenomena inaccess- 
ible to other individuals and the ultimate nature of 
which is just as unknown to himself except as a condi- 
tion produced by the stimulation of the nerve tissues by 
objectivity. Now, coming back to the physical marks 
accompanying the act of thinking, they are very clear 
to the perception. 

"As a man thinks in his heart, so is he." His 
thougths are generally put into outward acts, in the mo- 
tion of the muscles, e. g. in speech or in written langu- 
age. If not in either of the preceding ways then the in- 
tensity, of them can be determined by the following 
marks ; expansion of the arteries leading to the brain and 
the consequent increase of the circulation to the brain. 
These accelerate the action of the heart which modifies 
the whole vascular system; or by the fixedness of the 
muscle controlling the eyes or other organs of sense. 



THE PHENOMENAL EGO 159 

In fact in a broad sense the signs of life are the marks 
of thought. Should these physiological manifestations 
be prevented in any way, as by pathological conditions, 
then there would be no thought and I suppose that inter- 
ference with them in any degree would in the same de- 
gree lessen the coherency and perspicacity of the think- 
ing. I think if all the data of consciousness could be 
enumerated from the center of attention at any moment 
to the thousand things in the margin or sub-conscious 
aurora of it, it would be found that all are objective and 
come through the senses. The consciousness of one, 
deprived of every sense except touch, would be found 
to be made up of sensation coming from the environ- 
ment that act only on that sense. Should that also be 
taken away there would be no consciousness and per- 
ihaps no life. The psychologist who contends that the 
molecular motion or function of the nerve tissue of the 
central organ cannot be transformed into or rather that 
it is not thought, must account for thought in some 
other physiological process, or by some unknown agency 
whose seat is in some unknown locality acting directly 
in co-operation with the molecular motion. Otherwise 
he must declare himself an agnostic as to this phenom- 
enon. At least the thought cannot be dissociated from 
its physical connection, and until experience has dis- 
closed other agency, I see no way to avoid the hypoth- 
esis of the transformation of molecular brain cortex 
into thought. The word "function" explains all psychical 
phenomena. I cannot conceive of any function for the 
molecular motion in the brain unless it does produce 
thought. Certainly sensation produces thought, and 
sensations are conveyed to the brain by molecular mo- 
tion. Beyond that I have failed to discover any natural 
explanation of the phenomenon of thinking. This theory 



160 PHYSICAL BASIS OF MIND AND MORALS 

presupposes that the operation of all his senses com- 
bined gives man all his so called mental, moral, and 
physical characteristics. Without a ganglionic nervous 
system he could express none of these manifestations. 

The assumption, either expressed or implied, that our 
consciousness is produced by an agent or entity located 
somewhere in the body and catching the sensations con- 
veyed from the environment by nerve molecular motion, 
as the telegraph operator formulates the messages that 
pass over the wires, is analogous to Kepler's assertion, 
that notwithstanding his own natural laws of the orbital 
motion of the planets, yet there must be an angel in each 
star to hold it in its orbital relation with the sun. New- 
ton brushed away that idea by demonstrating the natural 
principle ofi the attraction of gravitation. 

Comparative Psychology : By observing the grada- 
tions of complexity and definiteness in the nervous sys- 
tems of animals, from the lowest to the highest, it is 
plain that intellect and intelligence depend upon the 
correspondence that these systems give the body with the 
relation of things in the environment. In other words, 
the psychology of the animal is the degree of perfection 
of this correspondence. The lowest animal life is with- 
out nerves. It has only the sense of touch, and that 
very feeble. In this regard it is very different from a 
human being deprived of all senses except touch. The 
human being is possessed of the nervous structure con- 
stituting the grey matter centers of the other senses and 
by the associative conduction paths crossing in great 
numbers every part of the brain these centers of the 
other senses are excited to the vicarious performance of 
the psychical functions of each other. So that the sen- 
sations coming through the sense of touch alone to such 
a brain structure produce nearly as much mentality, af- 



THE PHENOMENAL EGO 161 

ter repeated practice or experience, as if the outward 
sense organs were all in normal working order. The 
reaction of its muscles to the sensation of touch is slow 
in the animal without nerves. Such animal life is sus- 
tained by the absorption of whatever suitable matter 
comes casually in contact with its surface. It is with- 
out other intelligence than sustentation and procrea- 
tion. The difference between it and the most intellectual 
man is the difference of complexity in physical struc- 
ture, which of course, includes nervous structure. 

It will be found also that every thought is based in 
.physical necessity. Why does the twining vine grow its 
first two joints rigid and the third so mobile that it will 
vibrate in a circle, seeking an object around which it can 
twine? Or why does the rhizopod contract and appro- 
priate the soluble and nutritious particles coming in con- 
tact with its surface, but rejects the insoluble and in- 
organic, unless it is, that both phenomena in all essential 
elements are expressive of the same choice in less degree 
as man makes in his reasoning out a civil and moral 
code, which man considers essential to his physical wel- 
fare; the same essentially that similar acts by man, al- 
though more complex, constitute what is variously ex- 
pressed by the words thought, reason, memory, will? 
This physical basis to all thought is the necessity of the 
natural preservation of the organism, or of the race to 
which it belongs. In the case of the human being, and 
many lower animals, especially bees and ants, there is 
the added condition of social life which man, and I sup- 
pose the ant and the bee, consider also essential to their 
existence. Whoever is unselfishly pursuing truth in the 
abstract, is doing it by the compulsion or tendency of 
his organism. Truth is essential to his organized brain 
structure or his nerve structure is in necessary corre- 



162 PHYSICAL BASIS OF MIND AND MORALS 

spondence with a higher environment, in which truth is 
the essential thing. To the devotee of esthetics, the 
beautiful is a condition of natural existence, or at least 
of social existence to him. To him harmony in sound 
and color are necessary to the preservation of his or- 
ganism. Whatever man does seems in the last analysis 
to have at bottom the motive of preservation of either 
self or the race. The principle is apparent in all com- 
mercialism and industrialism. It is not so apparent in 
art or poetry. Yet when the artist paints a picture like 
the Angelus, or the poet composes a Thanatopsis or an 
Illiad, its greatness really consists in its lessons of true 
life, it points the way to higher, broader and deeper con- 
ceptions of man and his relations to his fellows — that is, 
it shows man how to preserve and prolong his life. 

Auguste Comte in his positive philosophy refused to 
recognize psychology as a science distinct from physiol- 
ogy. The reason is not obscure. It is that every psy- 
chical phenomenon has its physiological marks, in the 
absence of which there is no phenomenon. The new 
psychology is physiological. The old was metaphysical. 
Note the material elements of a Spencerian definition of 
an idea. "The psychical side of what on its physical 
side is an involved set of molecular changes, propagated 
through an involved set of nervous plexuses; that which 
makes possible the idea is the pre-existence of these 
plexuses," and they are the only part of the phenomenon 
that persists. The assumption that there is any other 
element takes the treatment of it out of the realm of 
psychology or science into that of metaphysics. Spen- 
cer's definition of an idea is inductive or scientific. Note 
the contrast between that and Des Cartes' definition, in 
which the physiological element is omited. Des Cartes 
says, "By the word idea I understand that form of any 



THE PHENOMENAL EGO 163 

thought, by the immediate perception of which I am 
conscious of some thought." This seems to me no defi- 
nition at all. No scientific definition can be given ex- 
cept that the physiological changes constituting the phe- 
nomenon give the psychical effect. Of a piece with Des 
Cartes' definition of an idea is his proof of an existence 
of a God. He says "The existence of God is known 
from the consideration of his nature alone." Even the 
Church of France could not abide this kind of nonsense 
and repudiated the Cartesian proof of God. 

The thought of one man is different from that of an- 
other because the nerve structure is different. The dif- 
ference in character among all animals is the difference 
in physical structure. This difference produces different 
phases of intellect and emotion. All animals are char- 
acterized by the emotions and whichever emotion, fear, 
anger, affection or self-feeling, predominates, gives the 
temperament. These emotions in the lower animals are 
unmodified, or very little modified by the brain or intel- 
lect. But in man the superior quantity and intensity of 
brain matter puts him in so much wider and more com- 
plex correspondence with obscure and complex relations 
in his environment that the impulses of the simple emo- 
tions are greatly modified or checked, but the process is 
molecular motion. That form of consciousness called 
reason and memory seem to be merely arrested reflex 
motion. The reflex arc of the nervous system in low or- 
ders of animals consists of a receptive, neurone, a central 
ganglion and a motor nerve running from the ganglion 
to the muscle. The motor action follows immediately 
the sensation. In the nervous system of man there is 
the same unit of the simple reflex and as many or more 
simple responses to sensory stimulation without the in- 
terposition of consciousness. But there is also the large 



164 PHYSICAL BASIS OF MIND AND MORALS 

ganglion called the cerebrum into and from which run 
nerves in continuation of the simple reflex. Those sen- 
sations too complex for simple reflexes to solve pass over 
the more complex arcs into the brain centers. The re- 
sulting perception, or conception, or abstraction is a 
higher phase of consciousness. That is, these higher 
centers of psychical action arrest the flow of sensory ac- 
tivity and turn it from the motor channel into the idea- 
tional centers. The psychical result is a relation called 
consciousness. It is the physiology of the organism that 
is modified by the difference in structure, and at the 
same time there is a corresponding difference in its psy- 
chology. Let us consider for a moment some negative 
concrete evidence that consciousness is a phenomenon 
and not an entity — not supernatural, and that thought 
has a physical basis in the preservation of the individual, 
or of the race to which he belongs. Few books account 
for the natural truths most important for man to know. 
A spiritual entity as the agent behind and producing con- 
sciousness should tell him whence he came or whither 
bound, but not in myths; or give the real reason for his 
existence, or why it is necessary for him to develop from 
a cell in each individual instance, grow to a certain size, 
remain in constant activity a certain time, then cease 
such existence in every instance and go back into the 
original elements of inorganic matter from which he ap- 
parently evolved. 

No man is able to tell how long mankind has been 
on the earth. The records begin a few thousand years 
ago, but fail to give any intelligible account of how 
this peculiar form of matter and motion called life, 
began, or why it seems to have arisen at a late period in 
the evolution of one of the smallest globes, of not only 
the universe, but of the solar system. Nor do they tell 



the: phenomenal ego 165 

whether the other globes have life, or why they evolve 
in the way and in the localities they do; nor whether 
there is any reality in the objective, or for that matter 
in the subjective. These truths seem to be beyond the 
limitations of the human intellect. It should seem to 
those who believe the mind to be a spiritual entity and 
part of the universal "soul" substance very peculiar that 
the reality of matter and motion so universal and con- 
stant to man's senses, is unknown to the highest intel- 
lect. This want of true knowledge producing agnosti- 
cism is not, however, surprising to a student of modern 
psychology. It is the physical limitation of the Ego's 
correspondence with phenomena only. The Ego has no 
physical structure capable of interpreting the tenth of 
phenomena. Could this correspondence be extended to 
a supposed reality behind the phenomena, or if a part of 
that reality existed as a monitor, as an entity in the body, 
to produce the thoughts and ideas of that body, then 
these insoluble questions should easily become soluble, 
otherwise what is the necessity for other than natural 
forces in the nerve tissue? 

The Ego, being a part of phenomena, is only a dif- 
ferentiated species of phenomena and seems to be in- 
ferior to many of them in the power of producing re- 
sults. For instance, matter and motion in the transform- 
ation from the nebula to the present status by evolution, 
has produced in physics the harmony of the stellar 
bodies; in chemistry the atmosphere and water; and the 
light of the sun, which falling on leaves and flowers re- 
appears as life.* Whether the true theory of light is that 
of Newton — the corpuscular, or that of Huygens — the 
wave, yet we know it conveys to us by photography and 



Le Conte's "Evolution." 



166 PHYSICAL BASIS OF MIND AND MORALS 

the spectrum, information of the remote parts of the 
universe, beyond the power of any other known form of 
matter and motion to convey. It is true before man can 
interpret these he must have' a nervous power, yet power 
of nerve tissue, or thought, or any psychic phenomenon 
is tame in comparison with this phenomenon. It ap- 
pears to me that the Ego's limitations prove it to be only 
a part of phenomena. And these material phenomena 
from which the brain of man derives so much knowl- 
edge must have been in operation just as they now are, 
ages before there was an Ego. Had there been any de- 
sign in their evolution with reference to adapting them 
to the use and benefit of man alone, the wonder arises 
why they preceded the advent of man apparently so long. 
I therefore conclude there seems to be nothing in the 
Ego, either subjective or objective, to give it special 
standing outside of the perpetual interchange of matter 
and motion apparently going on throughout the uni- 
verse. There also seems to be no other logical conclu- 
sion from all the facts than that the mind is a relation 
between certain objective phenomena, and that such re- 
lation passes away with the passing of the Ego. But the 
objective phenomena continue and do not in any respect 
depend for their existence on the consciousness of the 
Ego. It is quite certain also that this consciousness is 
only a relation between a very limited number of phe- 
nomena. An infinite number probably exist in the Ego's 
environment whose relation is beyond the comprehen- 
sion of human consciousness. 



CHAPTER VII 

THE ESSENCE OF PHENOMENISM 

The true lover of natural phenomena, especially of 
the beauty and harmony of the usual apparition that is 
so constantly present to the senses, cannot restrain a 
tendency to philosophize. Nowhere is this tendency 
more compelling than to him who wanders amid the 
silence and grandeur of the Rocky Mountains, along the 
banks of a clear sparkling stream, away from the common 
haunts of man. Here Nature, figuratively speaking, 
(meaning the combined phenomena of the universe,) 
whispers the purest truths into the ear of the willing 
listener, and never misinforms her votaries, although 
those votaries may at times draw wrong conclusions from 
the whispered truths. She is the mother of us all. While 
lingering near her heart, my brain was greatly impressed 
with the following ideas. They do not form a logical 
whole, yet they may impress the reader, as they did me, 
of the importance to the human organism to be in har- 
monious correspondence with these phenomena from 
which he draws all the sustentation of his moral, intel- 
lectual, and physical being. The words "mental" and 
"moral" used here and throughout this chapter are in- 
tended to convey ideas only of convenient artificial divi- 
sions of the functions of the aggregate organism. They 
are mere definitions of certain manifestations of the nor- 
mal working of the nerve structure as a whole, and of 
the resulting psychic life as a unit. 

16? 



168 PHYSICAL BASIS OF MIND AND MORALS 

It occurred to me that Buckle in his Introduction to 
his proposed "History of Civilization," tried to show that 
it was not the occult, or so-called spiritual, that was the 
basis or the real cause of our civilization, but that the 
soil, climate, and locality, together with hereditary in- 
dustrialism, accounted for the difference between the so- 
cial welfare of one people and that of another. A French 
author has lately written a book to prove that the superi- 
ority of the Anglo-Saxon in the battle of life, is really 
founded on his love of the soil, as the true source of 
his wealth and power. He claims that the Anglo-Saxon, 
wherever he settles, fastens himself and family on the 
all-loving mother earth, and turns her kindly productive- 
ness into the wealth for which some other peoples are in- 
clined to look to fictitious sources. This disposition is 
also shown in his great desire for personal ownership of 
the soil in fee. The sense of the exclusive possession of 
a piece of real property is characteristic of the Anglo- 
Saxon. * 

The real meaning of these authors seems to be that 
the fundamental basis of a true civilization is physical. 
They do not ignore that in the higher manifestations of 
mental life certain functions appear in so subtle a form 
that the ordinary man calls them spiritual or supernat- 
ural. But these authors are not misled by such appear- 
ances and are in accord with biological scientists that such 
appearances are the outgrowths of matter and motion. 
They therefore advocate the supreme importance of 
teaching mankind that natural and physical laws are the 
true sources of their strength and power. The subjects 
treated by them and the manner of their treatment indi- 
cate that strength of character in the individual or a peo- 



* "Anglo-Saxon Superiority," by Edmond Demolins. 



THE ESSENCE; OF PHENOMENISM 169 

pie is derived from a proper observance of the ethics of 
domestic economy. Industry of every kind is rooted in 
the soil. Without a footing upon the earth no form of 
life can long survive. These facts carried to their logical 
sequence result in the most enduring and beautiful ethics. 
The man who is really true to the laws of nature, is also 
true to his fellow man. He becomes altruistic in the 
highest sense and is a living exponent of the golden rule. 
A study of the rise and fall of nations, as disclosed by the 
one-sided and distorted history of them which we possess, 
shows that no civilization yet evolved, has long endured. 
The Assyrian, Babylonian, Egyptian, Hebrew, Greek, 
Roman, were all based upon some fatal error. They de- 
cayed and finally fell. Civilization is made up of two es- 
sential things, viz., man's relation to his fellows, and to 
his environment. His relation to his fellows must be de- 
termined according to the principles of evolution by nat- 
ural selection, or the survival of the fittest, by which the 
weak are replaced by the strong, and the attitude that 
the leaders of thought assume toward this principle will 
determine the early or tardy change of the present the- 
ological attitude to one of naturalism. As man's intellect 
expands changes in beliefs must come. Especially as fun- 
damental truths reveal themselves sucessively to his en- 
larging perception, he necessarily keeps continually read- 
justing his moral and social functions to meet the ever 
changing requirements. True history of ethics and so- 
ciology should be a record of these changes from cen- 
tury to century. Read aright, they are milestones on the 
road from absolute superstition and ignorance, toward the 
correct solution of natural cause and effect. It is grati- 
fying to know that so many authors of ability have al- 
ready written as Buckle has done. 

Man's relation to his environment should be deter- 



170 PHYSICAL BASIS OF MIND AND MORALS 

mined by the images made upon his brain centers by real 
objects. He thus only will recognize whence his organ- 
ism derives all its power — whether called physical, mental 
or spiritual. 

My idea is that the fatal error in former civilizations, 
as well as in the present civilization, is in popular 
ignorance of the natural laws of the Cosmos, and that 
the civilization of the future will be enduring in pro- 
portion as it makes the natural its foundation and the 
basis of its educational systems, and adopts the idea that 
whatever may be behind phenomena is not knowable, 
and from phenomena properly understood man can de- 
rive the highest knowledge, and the most enduring 
ethics. The theological conception of creation, that man 
was created perfect after all other things had been cre- 
ated for him and his destiny ; that the earth was the cen- 
ter of God's special care; that the sun, moon, and stars 
revolved around it for the purpose of contributing to the 
pleasure and welfare of man, or that the earth is a mere 
resting place to prepare him for a purer life beyond, is 
what heretofore has technically been called the geocen- 
tric idea. But my conception is that the term can be 
much more properly used in defining the true source of 
knowledge and inspiration, the real cause of man's reli- 
gion and happiness. While science has long ago shown 
that the earth is not only not the center, but a very 
small and insignificant part of the universe, yet it is the 
abode of our race; for mankind is confined to it irre- 
vocably, and from it and its natural productions must 
derive his life and everything that contributes to the 
support of life. It is therefore of the greatest import- 
ance that man learn all he possibly can of this source of 
his existence. The highest education is that knowledge 
which puts the Ego into the closest touch with his pro- 






the; essence of phenomenism 171 

per relations to all of his immediate environment, in and 
frdm which, the elements of his body and being are evi- 
dently derived. Therefore, the geocentric idea is correct 
scientifically, but not in the old theological sense. 

My understanding of the religion in China is that 
Confucius, whom the Chinese follow, did not teach a 
personal God, nor immortality. Therefore, the Chinese 
are not much saturated with the supernatural. It is the 
same with the East Indian. His Nirvana, while profes- 
sing to be elimination of evil, yet is practically annihila- 
tion at death. If the above definitions of the beliefs of 
these ancient peoples are correct, then they will exem- 
plify, by the long reign of their peculiar civilizations, and 
the principles here set forth, that the further removed 
the beliefs of the people are from the supernatural, the 
more enduring their civilization will be. 

The following extract is made from an article writ- 
ten by the British minister, Sir Robert Hart, at Pekin, 
China, on the "Boxer movement." It is a representa- 
tion of a civilization that is older than ours, which cen- 
turies ago passed through our present mental habits and 
have forgotten them, and in which Christianity, as a sys- 
tem, has not been an element. But the Golden Rule was 
a cardinal principle of it. 

"The Chinese are a proud — some say, a conceited — 
people, but they have very good reason for their pride, 
and their conceit has its excuses. Far away from the 
rest of the world they have been living their own life and 
developing their own civilization ; while others have been 
displaying what humanity may attain to with a revealed 
religion for its highest law, and a Christ for its pattern, 
they have been exhibiting what a life a race may rise 
to, and live, without either. The central idea of their 



172 PHYSICAL BASIS OF MIND AND MORALS 

cult is filial piety; reverence for seniority, intensifying 
with every generation that transmitted it, settles all the 
details of family, social and national life. They are a 
pre-eminently reasonable people, and when disputes oc- 
cur, it is the appeal to right that solves them. For thirty 
centuries or more, this recognized and inherited worship 
of right has gone on strengthening, and so strong is the 
feeling, that to hint to them right must be supported by 
might, excites something more than amazement. The 
relation of sovereign to subject, and of man to man, have 
so long been authoritatively defined and acknowledged, 
that the life of the people has been poured into and 
shaped by a mold of duty, while the natural division of 
the empire into provinces has been so harmoniously sup- 
plemented by provincial and inter-provincial arrange- 
ments, under the metropolitan administration, that law 
reigns everywhere, and disorder is the exception. The 
arts of peace have ever held the first place in' the estima- 
tion of all, and, just as might should quail before right, 
so does intellectual prowess win honor everywhere, and 
the leaders of the people are those whom the grand na- 
tional competitive examinations have proved to be more 
gifted than their fellows. In no other country is educa- 
tion so prized, so honored, so utilized and so rewarded, 
and such is the veneration for that simple vehicle of 
thought, the written character, that to tread on paper 
with either writing or printing on it, is all but desecra- 
tion." * 

I have no doubt, however, that the Chinese religion 
included the essential tenets around which the Christian 
religion crystallized ; viz : the golden rule and the ser- 
mon on the mount. These are the foundation stones of 



* Popular Science Monthly. 



THE ESSENCE OF PHENOMENISM 173 

every religion, and the same principles are exhibited by 
every atom of matter in the original nebula from the 
time of its first movement toward the integration of the 
present forms in the universe until . men and animals 
were evolved on this globe from the same atoms, still 
governed by the same principles. 

It is the habit of some to attribute to supernatural- 
ism, that is, the creeds of the Christian church, all that 
is good in the civilization of the world. But I think it 
can be shown that there is no original, automatic initial 
force in them ; that whatever is good in the Christian 
religion — and no man can deny that they embody as the 
support of their tenets, much that the world cannot do 
without — is rather the offspring of a condition of soci- 
ety, that has resulted from a much broader principle 
existing in the very necessity of the interchange of mat- 
ter and motion from the very beginning and continued 
in that form of it which we now call man. Religion is 
the result of civilization, not the cause of it. Jesus used 
the parable of the seed and the sower, and said that the 
seeds that fell upon the rocks did not produce, and that 
which fell upon stony ground, sprang up and soon died. 
So that the seed, (that is, the Christian principle), if the 
illustration means anything, has no initiative power 
within itself. It must be sown on good soil to bring 
forth fruit and this depends upon natural law, not super- 
natural initiative. So that the important thing to know 
is how comes the good soil — the condition of society that 
makes the principles of Christianity; that is, the altru- 
istic principle — able to take any hold of the people. The 
growth of the seed of any religion or morality depended 
upon the conditions of the people mentally. 

People who had followed unconsciously the law of 
evolution and kept close to the lessons taught by Nature, 



174 PHYSICAL BASIS OF MIND AND MORALS 

that the struggle for existence and the survival of the 
fittest, were the only methods of developing a strong 
people, were the ones in which the altruistic seed could 
generate. Those races in which the individual was made 
strong by honest work, by agriculture in the first in- 
stance, and then by other industries as they arose; ma- 
nufacturing and commerce; were the ones where Christ- 
ianity made its strongest impression. But a people thus 
prepared by the cultivation of all those mental traits 
that result from honest physical toil, in other words, from 
the struggle for existence, were already moral and reli- 
gious. They might not all be refined and intellectual, 
but they must be just, or they would have no prosperity ; 
they must be temperate or their development would be 
arrested ; they must, be virtuous because labor suppresses 
the passions ; they must be happy because happiness con- 
sists in the satisfaction that comes from the ability to 
overcome the difficulties of life; they are independent 
because individual effort in the industrial pursuits brings 
self-reliance, which is the essense of independence. 

The Anglo-Saxon race has made itself the ruling 
power in the world, because it has made individual labor 
the basis of its civilization. It began in England by fasten- 
ing itself to the soil, with a tenacity that the Norman and 
Danish conquerers were powerless to break. Then when 
manufacturing and commerce, were made possible by the 
use of coal as fuel, and the invention of the steam en- 
gine, their activity, strength, and self-reliance, which had 
come to them from their former agricultural pursuits, 
enabled them to seize the wonderful possibilities for 
wealth in these arts. But the religion and morals of the 
church, alone, could not have enabled them to do this, 
prior to the toning and refining influences of tilling the 
soil for food, and not roaming as mere hunters and de- 



the: essence: of phenomenism 175 

spoilers. It was intelligent, honest individual labor which 
brought, first, brain and muscle, then independence, then 
leisure for mental training. In other words, it was the 
religion that Nature taught them by her unchangable 
laws, as true and beautiful, so well adapted to the wel- 
fare and happiness of man. The change from wander- 
ing hunters and warriors to localized farmers and manu- 
facturers, gave a character and thoughtfulness to peo- 
ples. This of itself was the religion of the golden rule 
and the sermon on the mount. The^ shifting tribes of 
Arabia never did adopt the tenets of the Christian reli- 
gion, and are far from convertible at this time to the 
practice of the golden rule, because their habits of life 
are incompatible with it. They are the stony places 
where the seed fails to bring forth fruit of its kind. The 
point is that when the seeds of Christianity bring forth 
fruit the people have already evolved into a natural reli- 
gion which if continued as a natural evolution of moral- 
ity and religion would require no super-imposed spirit- 
ualism to make it strong and enduring. 

Norman kings annoyed the peaceful Anglo-Saxons of 
England somewhat, but their agriculture had made them 
patient and thoughtful. The struggle against the claims 
of rulers that began with the Danes and continued with 
Norman William, gradually developed in them more 
mental power. It built up the Common Law of Eng- 
land, the code of the rights of man against those who 
would enslave him. They thus gradually conquered their 
conquerers, and absorbed the very political masters who 
seemed to the outside world to be absorbing them. The 
conquest of William the Conquerer in 1066 has nothing 
surviving in the 19th century, except the impotence of 
a figure-head royalty, the pomp and ceremony of a pow- 
erless House of Lords, and the cohesion of Church and 



176 PHYSICAL BASIS OF MIND AND MORALS 

State. England's true greatness lies in the initiative of 
the Anglo-Saxon individualism, developed by honest la- 
bor. 

The United States is the apotheosis of that individu- 
alism, greatly developed beyond that of the mother coun- 
try, because she has left behind her the ceremony and 
militarism still remaining there, of the Norman power. 
I mean by this, that the greater development of the in- 
dividual toward independent thinking, and therefore the 
more rapid emancipation toward naturalism, or phenom- 
enism, have been greatly accelerated by the omission in 
our constitution and laws of those organized and legalized 
oppressors of the people — royalty and a state church. 
There were some of the inherited effects of the latter 
quite apparent in certain classes of colonial society at the 
time of the formation of our constitution. Hence the 
compromises of the constitutional convention by which 
African slavery was continued and the advantages given 
in the establishment of protective tariff for the benefit of 
the wealthy manufacturer. Yet it was an immense ad- 
vance toward individual emancipation when a state 
church, royalty and an hereditary upper house were 
omitted in the original constitution. But even with this 
advantage over the mother country the further evolution 
of the people of the United States toward complete eman- 
cipation from theological and economical delusions of all 
kinds, depends upon the same material causes that have 
heretofore produced the superiority of the Anglo-Saxon 
over his Norman oppressors. The pending struggle 
should be, to establish the principle that every individual 
should receive the full benefit of that which his individ- 
ual labor produces. There must not be either chattel or 
wage slavery. Nor must there be militarism. But all 
real progress in either mental or moral development must 



the essence; of phenomenism 177 

necessarily be founded on the material or physical neces- 
sities of both individual and race preservation. This 
means that with our feet firmly planted on the earth, we 
receive the sustenance from it alone, for our evolution 
of mind and morals. The word "earth" here means the 
organic as well as the inorganic. After "mind" is de- 
veloped we can look toward the stars. But even our real 
knowledge of these comes from a study of the earth. 

The strongest hold that theology has upon the mas- 
ses is that it has wisely embodied in its mysterious super- 
natural structure, an ethical code which, while not scien- 
tific but authoritative, yet is assented to by scientific think- 
ers, because of inability of a large part of the people 
to comprehend any other code. Much of the decalogue 
and all of the golden rule are natural codes of morality 
which every people are compelled, as a matter of self-pre- 
servation, to adopt. They would have adopted practi- 
cally the same ethics, had the idea of supernaturalism 
never existed. The idea seems to prevail that if the 
myths are swept away, the moral code will go with them, 
and the people will be left without a guide. But a mo- 
ment's thought will convince any one that if the change 
is made by the slow process of education; that is, by re- 
flection, reading, and a personal study of the facts of na- 
ture, the same way the scientists have convinced them- 
selves, that the same power of brain that has thus un- 
covered the untruth, will see that natural ethics are es- 
sential to the preservation of, not only society, but of life 
itself; that whatever is embodied in the theological code 
that is natural and essential to man, will remain \vhen all 
myths fade away. The gradual change that comes into 
the minds of trusting childhood, for instance, that be- 
lieves anything it is told, as education teaches it to dis- 
criminate between the real and the unreal, is typical of 



178 PHYSICAL BASIS OF MIND AND MORALS 

the change that will come into the aggregate mind of 
mankind, as the real facts of natural phenomena become 
apparent. Minds that are uneducated in scientific truths, 
are in the condition of childhood — they are ready at all 
times to attribute what to them are unknown mysteries, 
to a mysterious origin. We are told that childhood is 
typical of primitive man ; that is, of the condition of man- 
kind prior to historical time, and of what we now term 
the barbarian. In fact, scientifically, the various stages 
of the individual development of man, from the single 
cell in the embryo, all through its growth from the em- 
bryological period in the womb of his mother, and after 
his birth, through babyhood and boyhood, up to what we. 
call the fully developed man, are typical of his racial, 
(phyletic) physiological development. It seems that'our 
ideas of natural cause and effect are derived primarily 
from the activity of our own organisms as causes. Our 
ideas of energy are derived from our sense of effort in 
overcoming resistance. The unscientific reasoner there- 
fore would naturally attribute all effect to a like personal 
cause. From this idea he infers a personal creator. Like- 
wise some philosophers do this. In fact it is the essence 
of the theory of the immanence of the spiritual. My un- 
derstanding of Kant is that causation is merely a concep- 
tion of the mind and not an objective reality. 

But when we come to think of it, how little less prim- 
itive was the pre-historic man, than the one who now at- 
tributes the origin of natural things to supernatural 
causes. The man who lived in a cave, who wabbled in 
his walk, and had no written language, very likely did 
that. If the brain of man has developed in proportion 
only as man has placed himself in correspondence with 
the relation of things in the environment; that is, as he 
conformed his habits or functions to the laws of nature 






the; essence; of phenomenism 179 

in a wider sense at each step of improvement of brain 
structure, any impediment to that correspondence like 
his attribution, without thought, of all phenomena not 
understood, to a supernatural cause, would greatly re- 
tard his mental development. His comprehension of 
these laws enlarged only as his brain structure enlarged. 
Man only gradually acquired the ability to stand erect 
and slowly acquired a language, in which the better ob- 
servers could communicate to the duller ones. But the 
time he gave to the vague ideas he may have had con- 
cerning the supernatural cause of phenomena, did not 
aid him in acquiring these important functions. It was 
the exertion of all his natural energy in the direction of 
natural laws and material things palpable to his senses 
that accomplished these changes. The theologian treats 
the mind as an entity that should rise above, nature ; that 
the supreme realities of life are out of the realm of phys- 
ical science. That is true only if the mind is specially 
created and put by a supernatural power mechanically 
into the body, and is a thing not depending on material 
support. But if, as seems more probable, the mind is the 
aggregation of feelings resulting from the sensations 
coming from objective realities in the environment, and 
has been evolved in and of, and with the body alone, by 
the evolution of matter, in the form of nerves as numer- 
ous as the pores of the body, as multitudinous as the 
arteries and veins, then it at once becomes apparent that 
it is not an entity; that it is as absolutely impossible for 
the mind to control nature, or rise independent of its 
laws as it is for the body to exist without material 
sustenance. Mind is function of nerve tissue. Science 
makes no mystery of it. If mystery is what the theolog- 
ical mind desires to feed on, it need not go beyond the 
apparent phenomena of Nature. It will find it in great 



180 PHYSICAL BASIS OF MIND AND MORALS 

abundance in the material universe, in phenomena whose 
cause is yet unknown. 

Rev. William Chester, in his book, "Immortality, a 
Rational Faith," says, "Of course the question of im- 
mortality is out of the realm of physical science. So are 
all the supreme realities of life — God, the soul, the moral 
sense, the affections, the beautiful, the true, and the 
good." That is a singular combination of entities and 
attributes ; of final causes and effects ; of the abstract and 
the concrete. A reality is something palpable to man's 
senses, something that has an objective reality. Will not 
any intelligent student of physical science admit the phys- 
ical reality of "the moral sense, the affections, the beau- 
tiful, the true, and the good?" These are palpable at- 
tributes of the human organism, and some of them of 
all nature. The physical scientist will also admit that 
"moral sense, affection, the beautiful, the true, and the 
good" are immortal. These are effects, not causes, and 
are attributes of matter and motion, and in no sense en- 
tities like Mr. Chester's conception of God and soul. 
Prof. Haeckel, the advanced physicist, admits a soul to 
every atom, and that this soul is immortal. But probably 
this is not the soul meant by Mr. Chester. The atoms 
also have affection and the extreme "moral sense" of 
choosing at all times to do the "true" thing for an atom 
to do, which is to make the most "beautiful" combina- 
tions with other atoms, for the aggregate "good" of the 
universe, including man. So that these things are within 
the "realm of physical science." If he means by "God" 
the aggregate "good" within the comprehension of the 
best intellect, then that also is within the realm of phys- 
ical science. For it is within the conception of our 
combined physical senses, which is part of consciousness, 



the: essence of phenomenism isi 

that whatever occurs in the realm of physical nature is 
for the best. 

I believe it to be true that if we confine our data to 
the historical experience of the race, we shall find that 
mankind has not been able to keep in sufficient corre- 
spondence with phenomena to avoid a subjective con- 
ception of> a supernatural. It has not been able to form- 
ulate a code of natural ethics for want of intellectual 
ability to connect observed effects to natural causes. In 
this sense I might say that naturalism is not -antagon- 
istic to supernaturalism. Because naturalism assumes 
two aspects of equal importance in psychology, the sub- 
jective and objective in necessary correspondence. If 
the correspondence is so defective for want of a proper 
apparatus for maintaining the subjective aspect, I sup- 
pose we must still call the subjective conception natural, 
although it is not true objectively. Science might deal 
with this phase of what may be called abnormal psychol- 
ogy in the evolution of the human brain. But it can 
have nothing to do with abstract supernaturalism as a 
cause of phenomena. It is difficult enough for science 
to form even a tentative hypothesis that is satisfactory 
or adequate regarding phenomena. It is impossible for 
it to investigate the supernatural, for that is the realm of 
the unknowable. 

If all would or could agree that everything is natural, 
that nothing has ever occurred in opposition to or under 
suspension of natural law then the scientist can remain 
an agnostic as to ultimate reality, and the Theist can go 
on believing that the persistence of force is only another 
name for personality, and both can respect each other. 
It is true the scientist cannot carry his experiments be- 
yond the sensuous — he cannot trace phenomena to an ul- 
timate cause. Neither can the Theist. But the latter 



182 PHYSICAL BASIS OF MIND AND MORALS 

may indulge his faith to any extent. Therefore why 
cannot both agree upon that fact and confine attention to 
phenomena only — the former being content with agnos- 
ticism and the latter with personality in form of mind 
or spirit as first cause? 

The penetration of the human mind is very feeble at 
best, I admit, and with all its material helps, such as 
microscopy, telescopy, spectroscopy, photography, which 
is proving in later days the most effective , it has not yet 
discovered, except in the imagination of the theologian, 
a place the mind could rise to and get above nature, even 
if that mind should be an entity. 

Another thing we must remember in the discussion of 
this important question is, man is a late and the youngest 
product of nature. The largest part and perhaps the 
whole of this visible universe was here long before man 
was evolved. If he is a product of its matter and motion, 
then it is essential to his very existence, that he conform 
to its laws, and it is apparent that the more perfectly he 
is in correspondence with these laws, the less pain, dis- 
ease, and discomfort, and the longer life he will have. Is 
it not possible that if this correspondence could be made 
perfect, his life might also correspond in length, with 
that of other phenomena? Disease is a breakage of this 
correspondence. Death is a complete cessation of it. 

Now, what lesson does this teach? That his ethical 
or moral code must consist of that line of conduct that 
will tend to increase this natural correspondence. In 
other words, he must derive his true conception of right 
from the natural, and not from the supposed superna- 
tural. When his habits are in correspondence with the 
evident requirements of nature, then he is moral. He sins 
only when he violates the laws of nature and suffers the 
consequences, viz : pain. 



THE ESSENCE OF PHENOMENISM 183 

This principle is the foundation of Herbert Spen- 
cer's treatise on ethics, in which the subject is so elabor- 
ated and convincingly treated. Elaborated so as to pro- 
perly apply to all the relations that man sustains to na- 
ture and his fellow man, it will be found amply suffici- 
ent to account for and sustain the most altruistic condi- 
tions. It will account for the most abstract, and appar- 
ently disinterested love that man can have for others. 
But a proper observance of the principle will prevent 
what is likely to occur under a code of ethics not so 
founded, the weakening and final breaking down of the 
race. That is, Nature teaches by the survival of the fit- 
test, that the species must not and cannot survive if the 
weak or unfit are perpetuated. If a man is to build up a 
strong race, which alone is worthy to survive, he must 
remember this law and govern his altruistic efforts, both 
individual and organized, accordingly. Fortunately for 
the race, the efforts making by some misguided charities 
to reverse this law, are evanescent and puerile, for na- 
ture finally has her way, and the fittest only in the long 
run survive. 

This does not mean the killing off of the weak. But 
man, by not interfering with the evident law of Nature, 
which is a merciful law to the race, will thus place the 
welfare of mankind where it .will be most justly and 
mercifully dealt with by the most important natural law, 
of which we have knowledge. The most penetrating 
minds have discovered this to be the law, viz. the survi- 
val of the fittest by natural selection. Now this is the 
evident method whether it is natural or supernatural. 
No vicarious atonement suffices to avoid it. Natural 
morality consists in the efficiency of work whose effect 
is the good of the whole cosmos. I presume there is no 
personal design in the activity of a volcano that kills a 



184 '.PHYSICAL BASIS OF MIND AND MORALS 

number of people. But the effect is likely to preserve 
the process of earth evolution and this results in pre- 
serving the earth as a fit habitation for man. This is 
the highest morality and the truest religion. 

The gardener takes a few plants and places them in 
a hothouse. They grow to abnormal proportions, but 
very tender as long as the conditions remain, but when 
the abnormal heat, tender care and over sustentation are 
withdrawn, they revert to their original natural condi- 
tion. What we call "our boasted civilization," has very 
much a parallel process. There is a tendency to produce 
abnormal conditions by the reversal of the great iaw of 
nature, the evident effect of attributing to the superna- 
tural, the unreal, the source of all human happiness and 
progress. The farther away from physical science or 
the teaching of Nature a moral code departs, the less 
effective it will be in building up a strong and desirable 
civilization. The evanescent and feeble human brain 
must necessarily be the maker and interpreter of the 
moral code attributed to the Unknowable. The human 
hand writes what he calls the commands of the superna- 
tural. Emanating in theory from the unreal, not from 
objective reality, such laws cannot be the true basis for 
building up a real and lasting civilization. The theolog- 
ical codes now in force having been written when all man- 
kind was entirely ignorant of what are now plainly the 
perceived laws of nature, cannot be, except in part, the 
true guide to a strong, natural civilization, such as must 
be the natural code of ethics, the human race must event- 
ually adopt, when a proper foundation is laid in the 
knowledge of such great truths so lately discovered, as 
the persistence of force, the indestructibility of matter, 
the unity of nature, and the evolution — not creation — of 




the: essence: of phenomenism 135 

all things. That part of the decalogue and those rules of 
conduct which the experience of mankind finds in con- 
formity to natural laws, i. e., the laws of evolution, 
will abide. 



CHAPTER VIII 



A NATURAL CODE OF ETHICS 



Herbert Spencer says in "First Principles," that by 
the relativity of all knowledge, man can infer that be- 
hind the known, there is an unknowable reality. But if 
unknowable, it is worthless as heretofore stated as a basis 
of human action. Man must necessarily be governed 
in his line of conduct and thought by known laws; that 
is, by what he can conceive of the realm of nature. We 
may have as much faith as we desire that an unknow- 
able force is the final cause, but a working ethical code 
must be derived from the physical facts palpable to our 
senses. If evolution is the method of nature in produc- 
ing the apparition that is constantly present to our 
senses, in other words, the self and not-self, the all in 
all, then a code of ethics must be based on evolu- 
tion. If natural selection in the survival of the fittest is 
the law of evolution, even unto the highest form of human 
effort, then wherever the brain of man can perceive the 
method of natural selection in its relation to mankind 
that is the highest code of ethics he can adopt as his rule 
of action. 

In considering natural selection as the method of or- 
ganic evolution, we must not forget that it is not con- 
fined to the survival of the fittest individual, but extends 
also to the perpetuation of the social unit, the best 
adapted family, tribe, nation, or race. It is therefore the 
method of sociology and, ethics. Were it confined to the 

186 



A NATURAL CODE OF ETHICS 187 

individual it would be purely selfish, but when its primal 
merit consists in the preservation of the race, then al- 
truism becomes a factor in the perpetuation of all forms 
of social community. True altruism works for the bene- 
fit of the community, and this means the elimination of 
the weak and unfit in order that the community as a 
whole may maintain and increase its adaptive strength 
and effectiveness. This is what death means. It is the 
elimination of the unfit, that the young and strong may 
evolve a more specialized, heterogeneous, or complex 
community. Human laws are based upon this principle 
when they provide that the criminal, who is unfit to bear 
his part of the communal duties, and refuses to become 
unselfish to the extent of denying himself for the good of 
the whole, shall be put where his acts shall not injure 
the whole. This is natural selection. It is so with na- 
tions, which, living in a warlike period and amidst war- 
like neighbors, fail to provide means of public defense — ■ 
they are unfit in that respect, and pay the price of un- 
fitness by being absorbed and eliminated. It is a natural 
law that cannot be ignored ; and the highest morality, the 
most desirable altruism, is that which does those things 
necessary to its fulfilment. 

The present beliefs in the supernatural are simply 
modifications of the same fundamental ideas vaguely ex- 
pressed by our cave ancestors who wore skins for their 
clothing, and their own skins at that ; viz : that all phe- 
nomena, not understood, were caused by something 
unnatural; while mankind has progressed materially 
and intellectually, it has absolutely made no advancement 
and necessarily can make none in the ideas of the un- 
knowable. It has made some subjective modifications of 
what that unknowable may really be. It is apparent that 
the reason of this unchangeableness of the theologic idea 



188 PHYSICAL BASIS OF MIND AND MORALS 

is that the supernatural is beyond the reach of investiga- 
tion. There is nothing that science can reach, and 
hence there is no evidence and no growth. Therefore 
its existence is called assumption; the scientist calls it 
subjective. 

Of course, there has been progress in ethics and mo- 
rality, but no change in the belief that there is an ob- 
jective supernatural, except here and there an intellect 
asks for the proof. But the modification of ethics comes 
with the growth of the human brain intellectually, bring- 
ing a proper sense of what is best for the welfare of the 
individual and society. Ethics is not a necessary adjunct 
of the realm of the supernatural. It has been attached to 
that belief for the purpose of giving mystical authority to 
the code. A perfect code of morality, as much as man can 
attain to perfection, can come only with a perfect knowl- 
edge of nature, and must be based on man's relation 
thereto. There need not be any fear that the fading 
away from the human mind of the idea that there is a 
supernatural realm independent of the laws of Nature, 
will leave us without proper guides in morality and 
human conduct in general. It is probable that a better 
code of true ethics can be founded upon the well-known 
teaching of Nature and natural laws, than can possibly 
be based upon what the human brain can imagine may 
be the commands of "an Unknowable Reality." 

The trouble with the current code of ethics is that it 
is a fixed written prescription, based upon the fear of the 
unseen or unknowable. Spencer says, "Most people re- 
gard the subject matter of ethics as being conduct con- 
sidered as calling forth approbation or reprobation. But 
the primary subject matter of ethics is conduct con- 
sidered objectively as producing good or bad results to 
self or others, or both." 



A NATURAL CODE, OF ETHICS 189 

True morality, to produce any ennobling effect upon 
the race, must be based on man's correspondence with 
his environment. That is a code to which he will vol- 
untarily conform and can obey. This puts upon every 
action, every thought, however humble or unimportant, 
the stamp of morality or immorality. From the uncon- 
scious act of breathing up to the highest thought pro- 
duced by the molecular motion of the brain tissue, there 
is a moral and immoral way to do everything. The man 
who breaths physiologically is more moral than one who 
does not. 

The assimilation of food, the walk, the manner of 
wearing clothes, the expression of the face, the articula- 
tion of words, even the selection of the proper words in 
speech, all have an ethical bearing. If these are well 
done, it means that they fit into the noiseless correspond- 
ence — the life — of the organism and its surroundings; 
the laws of nature are not violated. But if they do not 
harmonize with the environment, then they are evil — im- 
moral, and the violator is punished by suffering some 
pain. 

The laws of nature are uncnangeable ; therefore man's 
welfare, his morality, consists in adapting himself to 
these laws, and not in calling upon some unknown power 
to change them for his special benefit. The man who so 
controls his functions as to meet all the varying phases 
of climate, gravitation, sustentation, etc., no more feels 
any of these phenomena than he does any of the eleven 
motions of the earth. 

Such a man thinks and says that Nature can make 
no mistake and does absolutely right at all times. 
Everything Nature does is not only absolutely right, but 
it does in every instance that which is for the best and 
moral welfare of man himself. Such a man will not be 



190 PHYSICAL BASIS OF MIND AND MORALS 

wishing for rain when it is dry, nor for cold weather 
when it is hot. He will be perfectly satisfied with what- 
ever comes, because he will be in proper correspondence 
with it. A perfect man, if such an organism were pos- 
sible, would be in perfect correspondence with all the 
requirements of natural law ; and death, which is the re- 
sult of this want of correspondence, would then be post- 
poned to the latest moment compatible with the welfare 
of the race, and then would be regarded, as it really is, 
only a change of form. This is an immortality which is 
worth striving for, because it is natural and does not re^ 
quire a miracle to make it possible. 

It is true that death is now regarded as a calam- 
ity, although an inevitable natural law. But in the 
ultimate analysis of it, there will be found this es- 
sential definition; it is the closing of the correspond- 
ence between the organism and its environment, by 
reason of that organism's violation of some of the 
essential laws of that correspondence, or from the 
necessity of race maintenance under the law of the sur- 
vival of the fittest. Of course, this definition of death 
makes it an essential link in the method of evolution. 
But its occurrence too early in life, if caused by violation 
of physical laws that are preventable, can be avoided by 
a wise system of education in physiology and hygiene. 
Death from old age can perhaps be thus postponed to a 
later average date than it now occurs, in the same sys- 
tem of proper education. The neglect of society to avail 
itself of these sanitary measures is the highest immoral- 
ity. Yet the present orthodox code takes no notice of it. 

It seems to me then, that the highest code of ethics 
will be based on this necessity of maintaining a rational 
correspondence with environment. All education should 
be directed to that end. The perfection spoken of above 



A NATURAL CODE OF ETHICS 191 

may never come, but we can make an immense advance 
beyond our present ignorance of this great truth. 

This natural code of morality is applicable to every 
condition and to every spot on the globe. It is a uni- 
versal religion. There will, of course, be a certain local 
peculiarity in the environment of every people that will 
tinge the natural morality of individual correspondence 
with such environment. But the principle of conformity 
to natural law, as the true basis of ethics, is not affected 
by these local phases, any more than the universality of 
the golden rule is affected by the organized habits of 
any one nation which may differ from those of another. 
The current code is largely local, for what is moral in 
one place is now considered immoral in another. 
This is proof that Nature is having her way, in 
spite of written codes to the contrary. Conscience 
cannot regulate it, because that is a creation of the 
locality. Nor can any man strictly live up to all 
the requirements of the present code. Any man prop- 
erly organized can live up to the requirements of a 
natural code. At least if he does violate some unim- 
portant requirements, he will suffer only in proportion to 
their importance. For instance, should he imprudently 
expose his person to a draught he takes cold. If he eat 
indigestible food, or drink intoxicants, his digestion is 
upset. If he violate any social law, or legal enactment, 
he suffers accordingly. But the present written code 
sends him to torments eternal, for any violation of its 
tenets, and especially for unbelief, which Nature does 
not include in her catalogue of sins. 

It is true that Nature is now enforcing this natural 
code without the least regard for any artificial code, and 
the punishment for all violation is being meted out daily 
before our eyes. But we refuse to see that this punish- 



192 PHYSICAL BASIS OF MIND AND MORALS 

ment is for lapses in immorality, that term being applied 
exclusively to acts which meet the approbation or repro- 
bation of another, and seldom if ever to lapses of natural 
laws, or human laws founded on the laws of Nature. 
The written code of ethics being in some of its parts so 
impossible to obey, the attention of man is entirely taken 
up with it, to the exclusion of what Nature teaches every 
day to be immoral. It may be that the light punishment 
that Nature administers for offenses that the theological 
code proscribes as unpardonable, makes men feel indif- 
ferent to her merciful code. But could men be aroused 
to see that sudden, or premature death, or exclusion from 
society for social violations are really avoidable by living 
up to a natural code of ethics, I think it would soon come 
to man also that the proper education is that which 
teaches how the most health and happiness can be gotten 
out of this life by a study of man and his relation to his 
complete environment. If men build cities near a threat- 
ening volcano, or on a level with tide water, and get 
overwhelmed or destroyed, that is a punishment that Na- 
ture metes out for ignorance and stupidity, not from de- 
sign, but because the great law of Nature is the survival 
of the fittest, which in this case would be those who avoid 
the destructive forces of life in the shape of fire and 
flood. 

That is, Nature violates the sixth commandment, but, 
of course, it is proper to prohibit man from violating it 
individually. For otherwise society could not be main- 
tained. The sixth commandment is correct as a rule of 
conduct for the individual and communities. But it is 
curious that, according to the account, God gave the 
tables to Moses on which he had written this command- 
ment and then as soon as the "Children of Israel" ar- 
rived in Canaan it is alleged that he commanded them to 



A NATURAL CODE OF ETHICS 193 

violate it by slaying the surrounding tribes. The law 
has been violated ever since. The decalogue from the 
fifth to the tenth commandment is a natural code of 
ethics. These would have to be incorporated into any 
civil law and are necessary regulations in every form of 
society. 

The evolutionist views man in his primitive stage as 
little above the animal, governed by passions, desires, and 
instincts inherited from his remote ancestors. His al- 
truistic evolution comes from his association with his fel- 
lows for the purpose of mutual protection and is cor- 
related with the economic, political, and intellectual evo- 
lution of society. But the theological conception is that 
man himself, was specially created perfect, with a con- 
science perfect in its power to discriminate between right 
and wrong. But as it is historically true that man was 
not perfect in historical time, for history as well as tra- 
dition shows that he ever was "prone to err as the sparks 
to fly upward," then it becomes necessary in vindication 
of the above theological conception to create in the mind 
another supernatural power — a personal devil — and give 
man a so-called free will under the control of said devil. 
The alleged perfection of Adam's creation did not pre- 
vent his going wrong at almost the first opportunity, and 
man has been doing the same thing ever since. It might 
not be a natural sin that Adam committed, but only a 
proscribed one. 

To reiterate, the question is, whether as man ad- 
vances in knowledge, and therefore in intellect, and he 
rejects this supernatural conception of the origin of 
moral's, and adopts that of natural evolution at the same 
time, will civilization be jeopardized in any way? 

I am sure I can anticipate the answer of every one 
who has at all investigated the subject, that it will not 



194 PHYSICAL BASIS OF MIND AND MORALS 

be. Whatever may be the belief about former kinds of 
civilization, we must conclude that the present imperfect 
form of civilization will not be injured but greatly im- 
proved thereby; that is, by a slow change of that belief. 
For only can the change come by the gradual processes 
of other evolutions — only as fast as other more logical 
ideas' are evolved to take the place of those fading away. 

"I have lived with communities of savages in South 
America and in the East, who have no laws or law- 
courts, but the public opinion of the village freely ex- 
pressed. Each man scrupulously respects the rights of 
his fellow, and any infraction of those rights rarely or 
never takes place. In such a community all are nearly 
equal. There are none of those wide distinctions of edu- 
cation and ignorance, wealth and poverty, master and 
servant, which are the product of our civilization. There 
is none of that wide spread division of labor, which while 
it increases wealth, produces also conflicting interests. 
There is not that severe competition and struggle for ex- 
istence or for wealth which the dense population of civil- 
ized countries inevitably creates. All incitement to great 
crimes are thus wanting, and petty ones are suppressed 
partly by the influence of public opinion, but chiefly by 
that natural sense of justice and his neighbor's right 
which seem to be in some degree inherent in every race 
of men." * 

The question then resolves itself into this — whether 
morality is a natural growth, or a supernatural creation. 
If it is a natural evolution, then there is no occasion for 
any conception of a supernatural power in order to main- 
tain it. As morality is the bond of civilization, it is not 






* "Malay Archipelago," by Alfred Russell Wallace. 



A NATURAL CODE OF ETHICS 195 

essential that any other than the true conception of its 
origin should remain in the human mind. 

Of all animals, man is the least able to supply his 
own wants. Therefore some kind of co-operation with 
his fellow-man becomes a necessity. Only animals with 
great power of supplying their wants can live in solitude. 
This weakness in man is the very element that has 
worked and is still working, not only for his higher 
morality, but also for the most subtile altruism. Both 
the morality and altruism, are therefore natural evolu- 
tions from the physical nature of man. For if sociality 
is essential to his proper sustentation and defense against 
enemies, the increase of the number who stand together 
for these purposes, and the tenacity with which they 
stand together, are very important and natural results. 
Hence, the evolution from this necessity, of love for wife 
and children, and to a less degree of his fellow-men in 
general ; hence, the establishment of the family, the tribe, 
the colony, the state and the nation; hence, patriotism. 
The highest of all is the brotherhood of mankind, which 
will eventually come by the working of the same natural 
evolution. 

If this is a true statement, where comes in the neces- 
sity of the conception of the supernatural, which has 
arisen from ancestor worship, in which the living are 
governed more by the dead than by the living? The hu- 
man vicegerent of an unseen personal maker of a code, 
can change the written decalogue, but the unwritten laws 
of nature never change, and no human hand can write 
them other than they are and always have been. 

This natural kind of ethics is not confined to the hu- 
man being. All the lower animals exhibit it in certain 
degrees. Was it supernatural power that implanted it 
there? It pervades all nature and is just and impartial, 



196 PHYSICAL BASIS OF MIND AND MORALS 

because governed by the natural operation of cosmic 
forces. 

As the mother presses the infant to her breast, she 
is governed in her love for it by the instinctive and un- 
conscious necessity for race preservation. At the same 
time, this begets in her the personal love that preserves 
the individual. 

What is it one really most admires in the founder of 
Christianity? Not his supernaturalism, but his human- 
ity. His brotherhood of man, his golden rule, the ser- 
mon on the mount and the parable of the good Samari- 
tan. These are in accordance with the human evolution 
of ethics. By means of its supernaturalism, however, 
Christianity was pressed into the service of war, slavery, 
and imperial oppression, and these were exercised gen- 
erally against non-believers. War, slavery and oppression 
have always been supported by the church and given 
divine approval through the pulpit, when the majority 
of a nation approved of them. Every tyrant who vio- 
lates the rights of the people claims to do so by divine 
authority. Before the Civil War in this country, the 
pulpit of the North preached against slavery, and that of 
the South for it. During the war the northern churches 
gave their support to the Union, and those of the South 
to the rebellion. Each side declared that his God would 
vindicate its contentions. 

My opinion is that if the idea of the necessity of the 
objective existence of the supernatural, had not existed 
in the human mind, all the fundamental truths discovered 
by science, and now so unconsciously taken as true by 
every one, viz., The Copernican system, attraction of 
gravitation, Kepler's laws, the nebular theory, evolu- 
tion, the unity of nature, the indestructability of matter, 
and the conservation of energy, would have had no oppo- 



A NATURAL CODE) OF ETHICS 197 

sition worth mentioning, and practically been adopted 
at the time of their announcement. So also the religious 
persecutions, both Pagan and Christian, would not now 
redden the pages of history with the blood of so-called 
unbelievers, all through historical time. 

Does any sane man of intellect believe that civiliza- 
tion would not have been greatly benefitted by the omis- 
sion of such opposition to science, and of the persecution 
of men because of unbelief? 

"Civilization is simply the process of an adjustment 
on a large scale whereby man's whole nature, physical, 
intellectual, and moral, develops in all its marvelous com- 
plexity in response to an environment, also increasing in 
complexity." But this adjustment must be made by the 
natural law of evolution before it can become enduring. 

Mark the order of the adjustments as stated — First, 
physical; second, intellectual; third, moral. This is the 
natural order of evolution in general. The first develop- 
ment of an organism from undifferentiated protoplasm 
is into the purely physical cell — the amoeba, for in- 
stance, consisting of one cell, and all stomach — no nerv- 
ous structure. It is not until the organism has attained 
considerable complexity that nerve structure is evolved; 
then intelligence begins to dawn. But it is not until it be- 
comes so complex in correspondence with a like com- 
plexity of environment, that it requires what are called 
memory, reason, and will, that the intellectual is evolved. 
Lastly, the moral or ethical is evolved from the intel- 
lect or develops co-ordinately with it. It is the same 
way in the evolution of society from the primal tribe, 
leading a purely animal life to the present complex civili- 
zation, governed still by the code supposed to be given 
by the supernatural in the patriarchal days. The present 



198 PHYSICAL BASIS OF MIND AND MORALS 

prescribed code of morality is not the "root but the fruit 
of civilization." But a natural code founded on the 
laws of evolution would be the root of a much higher 
and more enduring civilization than the present one. 
The reasons of this in addition to those already stated 
may be given as follows : Since the natural code is 
founded on the necessity for the adaptation of man to his 
environment, the complexity of it depends on the com- 
plexity of his nerve structure, which gives him greater 
and greater conception of the relationship just in propor- 
tion to the development of his nervous system. In other 
words, the more complex the intellect the more numerous 
and profound the objective truths revealed to it. It fol- 
lows that these higher adaptations and correspondences 
are the various aspects of that persistence of force, which 
working through what intellect man has, produces more 
numerous and stronger variations in individuals and so- 
ciety, and these being perpetuated by the principle of 
natural selection, a corresponding civilization would be 
produced thereby. It does not require me to compare 
such a system of morality with the present code to have 
others see how far superior as a positive promoter of 
higher civilization it would be. 

New England is a fine example of the evolution of 
the ideas of the people from the supernatural toward the 
natural. From the time of the landing from the May- 
flower, the Puritans, while far in advance of the reli- 
gionists of old England, and especially those of Spain 
and Italy, in the higher quality of their religion, neverthe- 
less were dominated by the most fanatic supernatural- 
ism, even to the extent of witchcraft and persecution of 
dissenters. Now, perhaps, Boston presents the example 
of the most advanced tolerance of religious opinion in 
the world. Any itinerant can preach any doctrine on 



A NATURAE CODE OF ETHICS 199 

Boston Common that is within the pale of decency and 
good order. No one thinks of tabooing another for any 
difference of opinion upon religious questions. So the 
United States, the freest of political countries, is at the 
same time the most tolerant of independent belief. It 
is the finest example of co-development of a high civili- 
zation, and the departure from the human mind of 
supernaturalism. Herbert Spencer's works had their 
first success in this country, and are now sold more 
largely here than in England. 

It has been clearly shown that industrialism, freed 
from slavery, in which every one is allowed to enjoy 
the fruits of his own labor, is at the foundation of all 
social progress. In the primitive age of man, war, not 
industry, was the means of accumulation, and industry 
was the pursuit of slaves alone. Not until labor became 
free and respectable did society begin to evolve along 
the line of better civilization. It was the working of the 
principle of natural selection that determined the best 
method of advancement. The best method survived, 
and the unfit died. Along with economic freedom, came 
what was called spiritual freedom, or intellectual free- 
dom to think as one pleased upon all subjects. So that 
freedom being once established in any one of the organic 
functions, by the principle of equilibration all other func- 
tions eventually become free. 

Now, the monastic and ascetic ideals of supernatural- 
ism in the middle ages were utterly incompatible with a 
free industrial and commercial spirit. So that it was no 
accident that the reformation of Luther, as well as polit- 
ical freedom, made most progress in the free towns of 
feudal Europe. It was the natural evolution from super- 
naturalism, co-existent with that of free industrialism. 

It thus results from the logic of facts as stated, that 



200 PHYSICAL BASIS OF MIND AND MORALS 

while emancipation from supernaturalism is not the first 
impelling cause of civilization, yet that industrialism, 
political freedom and naturalism, as opposed to super- 
naturalism, go hand in hand in the progress toward a 
higher civilization, and that our own country as present- 
ing, perhaps, the highest example the world has yet pro- 
duced, is at the same time the freest from the old super- 
stitions, and the farthest on the road toward the freest 
naturalism. This proves that not only is belief in super- 
naturalism not essential to a desirable civilization, but 
that a really desirable civilization cannot be evolved 
without at the same time slowly eliminating such belief 
from the human mind. 

Another proof that supernaturalism is not essential 
to civilization is that the idea in the minds of men of 
its attributes does not remain constant in the different 
stages of the evolution of civilization although the idea 
of its objective reality does remain constant. The God 
of the middle ages was a God of war, slavery and po- 
lygamy. The God of Jesus, as conceived now in the 
United States, is one of peace, love and fatherhood, un- 
til there arises what a president may consider a neces- 
sity for war, and then the God is changed to one of war. 
So the character of the God has always been changed to 
correspond with the varying desires of the people from 
time to time. The Mormon God is that of the middle 
ages and commends polygamy. This shows that the idea 
of the nature of God is an evolution from the civiliza- 
tion and not the creator of it. 

Says Macpherson, "Science will increase, rather than 
diminish the feelings of wonder, awe and humility, which 
are the real roots of religious feeling, and so long as this 
is the case, man need not fear that with the decay of the- 
ology, a blight will fall upon the earth." 



A NATURAL CODS OF ETHICS 201 

The ideas of the supernatural evolved in the minds 
of men appeared in the following order : 

First, external forces take the form of a personal will, 
like our own, residing in each object. This is fetich- 
ism. 

Second, it takes the form of several personal wills 
controlling each phenomenon in the different depart- 
ments of nature — polytheism. 

Third, the form of one personal will controlling the 
phenomena of the whole cosmos — the Hebrew God. 

Fourth, now, in the process of reconciliation of sci- 
ence and theology, it is proposed by such scientists as Le 
Conte to still further remove the personality beyond the 
realm of natural laws, and make him the entity or reality 
beyond appearances, as the starter or creator of the nat- 
ural, laws, but leaving those laws to work out by natural 
evolution their natural results without his further inter- 
ference. These are modified subjective ideas in the brain 
of man of the form and power of the supernatural. 
There has been no change in belief in the fact of its ob- 
jective existence from the day of our cave ancestors, 
among all believers in the theological idea. 

The fact that when the so-called Pagans of Rome 
were in power, they persecuted and killed the Christians, 
and when the Christians rose to power they did the same 
to those who did not believe as they did, proves to my 
mind that the belief in the supernatural is accountable 
for the persecution of each side. Had beliefs in a nat- 
ural code been prevalent, there could hardly have been 
this peculiar species of killing. Tolerance of opinion has 
arisen, only as this idea of the supernatural became modi- 
fied, but will not become perfect until the whole idea 
fades from the mind. There is no prophesying how long 



202 PHYSICAL BASIS OF MIND AND MORALS 

it will be before the human brain will become entirely 
free. 

If evolution is true, then in the light of the unity of 
the natural causes of all phenomena, it applies its great 
method of development from homogeneity to heterogene- 
ity, to every change from that of an amoeba to man, in- 
cluding the change of man's condition from a solitary 
roamer of the forest to his social status as the citizen of 
a great city. 

The fact is well known that ever since the beginning 
of historical time, society has been advancing in the 
forms and essentials of its civilization. Not in a direct 
line but as all progress is made, rhythmically, in period- 
ical ups and downs. Today, the conditions are almost in- 
finitely better than they were in the dark ages, when the 
densest superstitions ruled men, and very much better 
than two hundred years ago, when witchcraft and slav- 
ery were quite universal and when the death penalty at- 
tached to a large number of simple misdemeanors, and 
debtors were imprisoned in filthy dens. Has the idea of 
the supernatural in men's minds correspondingly faded 
away? 

I think the facts will show that as civilization has ad- 
vanced, at the same time many superstitions have passed 
away, all religious ideas have become correspondingly 
modified, the gross anthropomorphical conception of a 
God that once obtained has constantly advanced toward 
the abstract, and has become less and less personal. Even 
in the last fifty years, there has been a great change in 
the discourses of theologians. 

N. S. Shaler in the "Individual," says, "Theology 
failed in its interpretation of the universe, because it 
busied itself with personal causes." (Metaphysics deals 
with entities, e. g. the vital principle). "Until Spencer 



A NATURAL CODE OF ETHICS 203 

began to write, the conception of nature was that of a 
colossal machine, the various parts of which were espe- 
cially manufactured to fit into their respective places. 
It may be taken for granted that the conception which 
people form of the universe, and of their relation to it, 
will largely influence the nature of the social bond." 

Evolution is a change from homogeneity to hetero- 
geneity, and society grows just as the human body grows, 
modified by all the circumstances surrounding it — espe- 
cially by the degree of correspondence it has intellectu- 
ally with the facts of the universe. The nearer it comes 
to perceiving the truth everywhere apparent to high in- 
tellects, the greater the number of functions society de- 
velops, and therefore the higher is the civilization. I 
conceive 1 that civilization is high where individual oppor- 
tunity for growth in intellect, altruism and longevity are 
great, and that this individualism is at the same time 
subordinated in the proper degree to the welfare of the 
aggregate. 

When man enjoys the right of freedom, the right to 
enjoy the fruits of his own labor without the fear of 
spoliation, then happiness naturally follows. All he can 
ask of the state is that it will protect him in his natural 
rights, in return for what he contributes to the welfare 
of the state. 

Paine in his "Rights of Man" says, "The more per- 
fect civilization is, the less occasion has it for govern- 
ment, because the more does it regulate its own affairs 
and govern itself." He means by this that the more the 
intellect is developed, the less is man inclined to encroach 
on the liberty of his fellow man. Thus intelligence and 
altruism are evolved simultaneously. As soon as man 
becomes intelligent enough to perceive that interference 
with the rights of his fellows jeopardizes his own rights, 



204 PHYSICAL BASIS OF MIND AND MORALS 

then he needs much less than ever before any govern- 
ing power to compel him to keep his hands off the per- 
son or property of another. 

When man shall fully understand the principle of evo- 
lution, he then only will begin to comprehend that he is 
no longer a stranger to his environment. As soon as 
he is taught that he is not a manufactured article, set 
down from an unknown region into a strange country, 
for a short stay only, but that his organism is evolved 
out of his habitat, that every apparent thing, organic and 
inorganic is akin to him, composed of the same material, 
shaped by the same force, and governed by the same laws, 
he will then begin to feel at home. He will look around 
to see what can be done to increase his correspondence 
with this blood-relationed environment. He will find 
that his pedigree reaches back to the very beginning of 
the universe; that the interaction of matter and motion, 
beginning with the atoms of the nebula, continuing in the 
molecule, in the crystal and the sphere, did not produce 
a unit fine enough to enter into the formation of organic 
life until the alembic of perhaps untold eons had refined 
the matter by the immeasurable heat of a burning uni- 
verse. 

If there was any beginning to life, it was when the 
laboratory of nature had worked upon the material long 
enough to first produce the universe, as we now behold 
it, before the organic unit, now called a cell could be 
evolved, and from that previous product of Nature's re- 
finery, man finds himself evolved by the same slow proc- 
ess of growth and elimination. 

What dignity and nobility does this hypothesis give 
to man ! It makes him the apotheosis of cosmic, not per- 
sonal forces. He is the product of the ages and akin to 
all that has gone before. There is not only reason and 



A NATURAL CODE OF ETHICS 205 

dignity in this view of the place of man in the universe, 
but warmth and glow, which no other hypothesis can 
give. 

This view of man makes him a product of nature. He 
comes from below and his power is there. The other 
makes him a product of something beyond nature, in 
which shape his power would descend upon him in the 
form of control, not growth. Our present form of civil- 
ization, has been evolved upon the latter idea. Here and 
there only, in the history of man, has it cropped out that 
he is at all a natural product. The family, society, and 
government are crystalized around the conception that 
the universe is a personal emanation and under personal 
laws, emanating from a central place unknown, but whose 
variable will is the cause of all phenomena, whether good 
or ill. This conception necessitated that man should 
spend the most of his time propitiating this personality, 
who, according to the theory, had it in his power to send 
or withhold the warmth of the sun, the rain, the storm, 
health or disease. The evolution of civilization in this 
belief necessarily established a class who by their recog- 
nized natural ability and assumed knowledge, were be- 
lieved by the masses to be nearer and in closer corre- 
spondence with this omnipotent personality than others. 
This class became the medium through whom the com- 
munications from the controlling personality to the 
masses, and from the masses to him, were necessarily 
transmitted. This class became the educators, the chiefs, 
the priests, and the rulers of the people. They taught 
the people what they considered it best for them to know 
and that was always, that they must believe in the super- 
natural personality and obey what this power communi- 
cated through their teachers and rulers. 

What a power and temptation this was! What a 



206 PHYSICAL BASIS OF MIND AND MORALS 

power it was to keep the masses in ignorance of every- 
thing that would upset their belief in this personal gov- 
ernment! What a temptation to communicate to the 
masses only those things that would continue the me- 
dium class in power, and fasten upon the masses those 
institutions that would tend to make them slaves to the 
medium class! This medium class became the kings 
and priests by "divine right"; by the same right slavery 
and polygamy were established and maintained. 

It is true a moral code was interwoven in the most 
ingenious manner with the other teachings. But this 
prescribed moral code never interfered with the preroga- 
tives of rulers and priests. When the moral code said, 
"Thou shalt not kill," it did not mean that kings could not 
kill their subjects and slaves ; nor that the church should 
not kill those who disbelieved. When it said, "Thou shalt 
not bear false witness against thy neighbor," it did not 
prevent the rulers from misrepresenting to their subjects 
and making war by deceit and lying upon neighboring 
tribes and nations. In other words, the moral code was 
made for the subjects and not for the rulers. These 
teachers of the people kept them in ignorance' of every- 
thing, except the belief in the supernatural and obedience 
to the decalogue. They were taught those things only 
that would not interfere with this belief. 

This was the condition of affairs prior to the eight- 
eenth century. How much of this condition still re- 
mained in the civilization of the nineteenth century? Let 
us recite a few facts well known, but ignored and almost 
forgotten by everyone. 

In our own country where our organic law is in the- 
ory based on the equality of all men, the inherited taint 
of this theological division of the people into classes — 
one the ruling class and another the ruled — still lingers 



A NATURAL CODE OF ETHICS 207 

in the habits of the people and in many of the iniquitous 
laws that are kept upon the statutes. A natural code of 
ethics will bear equally upon all men and not require one 
to "bend the pregnant hinges of the knee that thrift may 
follow fawning" ; nor will it make of an elected executive 
a ruler, but a servant of the people. Oppression in the 
form of legal enactment can have no place in a natural 
code, nor under it could a class of citizens who have the 
mental power obtain possession of government for the 
purpose of depriving another class of the benefits of its 
own production. Under such a code human laws must 
follow the laws of nature in bearing equally and equit- 
ably upon all. 

As to the religious habits and mental conditions under 
the old theological conception, I will quote from Profes- 
sor N, S. Shaler's "Individual," pp. 206-207. 

"Those who have been so fortunate as to have been 
reared in a true Christian faith can have no sufficient 
idea of the torture to which the minds of men were sub- 
jected by the old fashioned discourses on the punish- 
ments that after death assail all save the few chosen ones. 
The human fancy has ranged far, but nowhere else has 
it gathered such a harvest as in the sulphurous realms. 
Cruelty is a natural motive in man; it came with the 
vast store of good and bad that was sent to us from the 
lower stages of life. All the better influences of society 
worked against it. The teachings of Christ should have 
banished it from the earth, but for nearly two thousand 
years these teachings have been made in appearance to 
justify the endless picturings of torments upon the im- 
mortal bodies of those he sought to save. I recall the 
preachings of a worthy man, famous in my boyhood as 
a great exhorter. I see and hear him even now, after 
nearly half a century, rolling out his story of the tor- 



208 PHYSICAL BASIS OF MIND AND MORALS 

ments of the doomed, with a drone of sorrow in his 
voice, but with an evident relish of the cruelty that he 
painted amazingly well. Men and women fell down 
with fear and horror before the terror he forced upon 
them, the terror of what death may open to man. 

"For centuries a host of able men have been at work 
perpetuating these brutal ideas throughout the civilized 
world. Can we wonder that, with this endless dwelling 
on the ancient conceptions of the brute and primitive 
man, cruelty and fear which Christianity should have 
cleared away still cling to man? That the altruistic mo- 
tives which naturally lead them to put aside all personal 
considerations of their fate should still have so small a 
part in their actions? 

"One of the best things that can be said of the cent- 
ury (the nineteenth) that is drawing to its close is that 
it has seen the end, or at least the promise of the end, of 
the ancient demon-worship. The physical hell, the per- 
sonal devil, his imps of all degrees, the fiery furnaces, 
and all the other agents of torment are passing away 
from the imagination of man. There is probably not an 
educated clergyman who believes in them. There is 
scarcely an intelligent congregation where the preach- 
ing that was demanded fifty years ago would be toler- 
ated today. The idea of suffering for evil done is firmly 
rooted in the minds of all men of sound moral nature; 
suffering in this or any other world until it has accom- 
plished its fit work; but the old conception is now being 
purged from our religion, which it has so long dis- 
graced." 

The character of the present civilization in the light 
of its retarded and stunted outgrowth may be outlined 
as follows: 



A NATURAL CODE) OF ETHICS 209 

Men seem to have done and are now doing instinct- 
ively those things that are concrete and are not beyond 
their capacity. The great bulk of organized society con- 
fine themselves to agriculture, commerce, manufacturing 
— to money making in general. All these pursuits have 
reference to the support and adornment of the body and 
require the least amount of brain energy. That is, the 
great bulk of the people are spending their lives in doing 
in a little higher degree, just what the lower animals are 
doing. An animal's existence in the wild state is a strug- 
gle; that is, an effort for existence only. If he can get 
enough to eat and defend himself from his enemies, that 
is the sum total of his life. The man who gives himself 
up to industry or business does practically the same 
thing. His brain, of course, is very far superior to that 
of the animal. But that extra brain, the difference in 
nerve structure between him and the animal, he devotes 
as a rule, to higher quality of struggle for existence only. 
The philosophy of life, the science of religion, the rela- 
tions he bears to the forces of his environment ; he hands 
over to this medium class and refuses to think about 
them. The animal hunts and grazes; the man cultivates 
the ground for his vegetable sustentation and selects his 
animal food by domestication. The animal wears the 
dress that grows upon his skin ; the man selects his mate- 
rial and manufactures clothing. The man makes a fire 
and cooks his food. The animal as a rule (there being 
some exceptions) dwells and sleeps in the places he finds 
at hand without any contrivance or mechanism on his 
part ; man builds himself houses of some kind in which to 
live. The animal changes localities on foot or wing or by 
swimming; man subdues beasts of burden, builds vehi- 
cles, utilizes the natural power of heat or electricity to 
carry himself, his food and clothing from place to place. 



210 PHYSICAL BASIS OF MIND AND MORALS 

These differences in the methods of bipeds and quadrupeds 
were largely the result of man's acquired erect position. 
This acquired function modified the anatomy and physi- 
ology of the whole human organism. The arms became 
shorter and unadapted to an arboreal life. The hands 
retained their prehensile power, but the feet lost their 
power of grasping the limbs of trees. The feet gradually 
flattened on the soles and calves developed on the lower 
legs, adapting them to support and steady the body in 
the upright position. These changes contributed to the 
better defence from enemies and the power to capture 
other animals for food, by throwing a missile with steadi- 
er and surer aim. 

The upright position also gives a longer reach to 
vision and must have modified the anatomy and hence 
the physiology of the lungs and throat. In my opinion 
it made possible articulate speech. I cannot verify this 
anatomically. But it is scarcely possible that if man had 
continued to the present time a quadruped, he could have 
acquired the function of articulation of words in the way 
words are now used. The freeing of his hands from 
mere aids to locomotion has also enabled him to contrive 
and construct. 

He gradually acquired the power to record with these 
free hands a written language to represent the sounds 
of his voice by which any advance in the methods of the 
struggle for existence can be permanently communicated 
to his fellow men, not only to his own generation, but to 
those of the future. The result has been that in addition 
to the former communication of new ideas and facts by 
direct contact and personal observation, distant peoples 
are rapidly informed by books and periodicals of all new 
methods and discoveries. The art of printing has thus 
given an immense impetus to man's efforts over those of 



A NATURAL CODE) OF ETHICS 211 

the animal in the struggle for existence. But notwith- 
standing all this it is well to observe that the men who 
use all these advantages that man's enlarged brain power 
has given him over the wild animals, who still use the 
primitive means of existence for the mere support of the 
body, are still on a level only with the animal in the ob- 
jects of his life. They accomplish the same object, only 
in a human and more complex way. The human way of 
sustenance and clothing is better in quality only. It has 
a better effect in prolonging life. The human generally, 
not always, dies a natural death, the animal seldom, and 
Seton Thompson says, never. 

The above remarks apply to the great majority of 
mankind and may be called "arrested mentation." But 
here and there an occasional human being, a natural vari- 
ation, having more brain power than his fellows, per- 
ceives that there is still more in the environment than the 
mere means of bodily existence. The gratification of the 
instincts of hunger and protection from the variations of 
temperature, of course, are the first and most important. 
Yet beyond the immediate environment of touch and 
taste, there lies yet a world of sight and sound. This 
man of enlarged brain perceives that beneath and above 
the ken of the common utilitarian there lie the higher 
sources of the pleasures that come only to the convolu- 
tions of the grey cortex of the prosencephalon. I de- 
sire to emphasize the fact that the enlargement of man's 
correspondence with nature is made possible by the struc- 
ture of matter only, the crown of his upright position, 
the prosencephalon. It is only a small mass of despised 
matter. But without it man and the lower animals would 
be practically analogous in their psychical function. But 
with this added structure which undoubtedly came to 
him after he had long walked in an upright position, he 



212 PHYSICAL BASIS OF MIND AND MORALS 

calculates the motions and weights of the stars. He ana- 
lyzes and reads the light of other worlds beside his own 
and interpreting the facts of the universe he is evolving 
slowly a higher and saner civilization. 

It is well, however, to note that only a few men are 
capable of doing this. The welfare of the whole is bet- 
ter subserved for the time being, and the eventual evo- 
lution of a better civilization promoted by each individ- 
ual doing those things only with which the development 
of his brain is in closest correspondence. It would be a 
sad state of society if the majority should give their ef- 
forts to those functions they are the least fitted to per- 
form. A larger part of civilized society is undoubt- 
edly rapidly advancing by means of their concrete hab- 
its to a higher condition, where some of what is now 
called abstract mentality will accompany the concrete. 
That part of mankind that practices cannibalism is doing 
just what the lower animal is always doing. It was a 
great advance in civilization when men began to look up- 
on life as sacred and inviolable. There is much to learn 
in this respect yet, even in the highest forms of society, 
which will not be learned until war and capital punish- 
ment are abolished. 

A great advance was made also when societies began 
to be formed for the prevention of cruelty to animals. 
But the object of this treatise is not to find fault with 
the present state of man's evolution. It is to point out 
that evolution is the natural result of the principles of 
natural selection by which, and only by which a verile 
and efficient condition of society can ever be formed. 
The very fact that men instinctively 'do only those things 
that their brains prompt them to do keeps their sub- 
jective lives in correlation with a like complexity existing 
in the objective environment. This is sanity. Every hu- 



A NATURAL CODE OF ETHICS 213 

man being if he would maintain the harmony of organic 
life as well as the equilibrium of society can be active 
only as objective phenomena operate through his senses 
upon what brain he has. This correspondence is the 
measure not only of his life, but of his power to do 
things. It is the measure of his ability. The aggregate 
of it is the criterion of the current civilization. If he is 
in correspondence with nothing higher than those condi- 
tions which support animal life only then he instinctively 
confines his efforts to those pursuits that sustain it, viz: 
agriculture, commerce and manufactures. This is a part 
of the natural moral code. But the immense advance in 
the last century of the means of geographical distribu- 
tion of the human races, their tendency to emigrate and 
mingle by outcrosses together with the universal desire 
for improved educational systems for the young will pro- 
duce more numerous variations in brain structure than 
ever before. These will be an irresistible power which 
will steadily enlarge and more rapidly than ever before 
evolve a civilization finally based on phenomenism. 

After all, the civilization of the past was an evolu- 
tion by natural selection, or the survival of the fittest, 
handicapped by superstition and credulity. So in the 
same manner, will the civilization of the future be 
evolved. It seems certain to my mind that the evolution 
toward the natural will be much more rapid in the future 
than it has been in the past, because of the numerous 
scientific truths revealed to the people, and because the 
number now doing their own thinking is so much greater 
than ever before. When the thinkers and reasoners be- 
come numerous enough the less informed majority will 
follow in the same line of belief. It will necessarily be a 
higher and better type of civilization, and at the same 
time, there will be a very much higher, or a more scien- 



2H PHYSICAL BASIS OF MIND AND MORALS 

tific conception of man's relation to the universe. It 
seems to me that the order of evolution will be :— 

First — A better system of education, wherein biology, 
psychology, and sociology, especially the bearings of 
these sciences on the welfare and happiness of the human 
race, will replace all the fantastic and unreal in the pres- 
ent system of education. 

Second — Following the above, but apparently co-ex- 
istent with it, as the intellect expands by such studies, the 
idea of the personal in natural and human phenomena, 
will give place to the idea of the natural and impersonal 
— the inductive method of dealing only with facts. 

Third — Then the personal in sociology will at the 
same time change to the general and racial, as it is now 
doing as rapidly as feudalism is giving place to democ- 
racy. 

Righteousness, including ethics, will develop incident- 
ally and equally with the above three evolutions. For a 
man's proper relations to the universe become apparent 
by scientific study in psychology. It will become equally 
apparent that the highest ethics will be man's best cor- 
respondence with his environment, or in other words, the 
natural use of all his functions. 



CHAPTER IX 

LIMITATIONS AND IMPEDIMENTS 

When one reflects upon the vast amount of investiga- 
tion that has been published in the last fifty years by 
both scientific and literary authors upon the most im- 
portant question that can occupy the thoughts of man, 
viz : whether the perpetual phenomena apparent to our 
senses, have anything more than the persistence of force 
behind them ; the philosophic mind is amazed that the 
scientific conclusions reached, have made so little impres- 
sion, not only upon the mass of the people, but upon those 
who are popularly esteemed as educated and thoughtful. 
I presume one reason to be that scientific investigators, at 
least the most able of them, are still in a state of scien- 
tific speculation upon many points. They always will be 
uncertain and agnostic upon very many of the questions 
that will ever arise for solution. It is true that they have 
settled as fundamental truths, such great problems as the 
Copernican system of astronomy, the nebular theory of 
La Place, the attraction of gravitation demonstrated by 
Newton, the principle of evolution laid down by Darwin, 
and the unity of all nature. These are certainly enough 
to entirely subvert the former beliefs in their own minds ; 
yet many problems that the average theological mind 
thinks of importance , for instance, the origin of man and 
his destiny after death, will ever be followed by an in- 
terrogation point. 

The origin of either matter or life is not yet settled, 

215 



216 PHYSICAL BASIS OF MIND AND MORALS 

and likely never can be by man. Therefore, the word 
"origin" in this sense is an interloper in our language. 
There is an origin of forms only. If there was any be- 
ginning to matter and force man was not there to see it, 
and should an end come he will long before have ceased 
to exist. There was no beginning to nature, and there 
will be no end so far as man's knowledge is related 
thereto. Not having any real control over the forces 
that seem alone to have evolved the great variety of 
forms around us, man cannot bring to bear in his labo- 
ratory, the necessary agents in sufficient quantity, qual- 
ity and power, to produce what he sees produced by na- 
ture, in new form of substance daily before his eyes. This 
fact is seized upon by the theologian as proof that life, 
for instance, must have been created by a power above 
nature. 

Some writers upon these subjects assert that God 
created and set in motion these natural forces, then left 
them to work out the results by the method of evolution. 
Should this be the fact, exactly the same argument that I 
am making would still apply, viz : that mankind must 
adapt human ethics to the laws of nature. For if God 
does not interfere in the process, we cannot successfully 
appeal to him for protection, but must as a necessary sub- 
stitute adapt our lives to the phenomena by first form- 
ulating a true conception of the phenomena, and by our 
own efforts conforming thereto. My argument is logical, 
whether the power behind phenomena be personal or im- 
personal, because the lesson taught by the phenomena 
themselves is, that that power does not interfere therein 
for the protection of man from the operation of natural 
law; that the only objective correspondence man has, is 
with the natural law, not with the supposed power be- 
hind it. We see life produced every day, evidently 






LIMITATIONS AND IMPEDIMENTS 217 

by forces that are cosmic in their power, and be- 
yond the control of man, and can see only a nat- 
ural power at work in the process. Why then is 
it necessary to assume that there is some power un- 
perceived by our senses creating out of nothing the phe- 
nomena? It is altogether sufficient for us to know that 
nature, whose operations are perceivable by our senses, 
does these things. One reason must be the fear of dis- 
turbing the established order of current thought; for 
fear also that the ethics of the people will be thus de- 
stroyed. I have given in the preceding chapter my 
reasons for thinking that ethics will be improved thereby. 

Science is making wonderful discoveries now of 
things that were as mysterious a few years ago as the 
so-called "Origin of Life." The principle of evolution 
has made plain many processes heretofore considered too 
obscure and complex for man to investigate, and it seems 
to me, will in the future unravel more so-called myster- 
ies, and prove that truth requires that nothing is too 
mysterious or too sacred for man's intellectual probing. 
Evolution is gradually changing the whole current of 
thought and reasoning of the thinking world. 

Professors Hseckel, Jacques Loeb, J. B. Burke and 
others are investigating the connection between the 
inorganic and the organic in the origin of life forms ap- 
parently with some success. It is likely if they succeed 
that it will be found that life is a phase of the persist- 
ence of force. The discovery will not advance the knowl- 
edge of origin beyond phenomenism. It is not essential 
to the welfare of man to consider an ultimate cause 
which he can never penetrate. It is a common saying 
that man, when he contructs the steam engine or the 
electric motor, by which industrialism is so much aided, 
controls the forces of nature. Man in the true sense does 



218 PHYSICAL BASIS OF MIND AND MORALS 

not control any natural force. "Correspondence with" 
is the phrase to use in this connection and not "control.'*' 
By virtue of his larger nervous structure, he is in cor- 
respondence with a greater number of objective things 
and their interrelationship in his environment than any 
other animal. His erect position is in itself indicative 
of larger brain and nerves. As stated in the foregoing 
chapter by the freedom of his hands from the necessity 
of quadrupedal locomotion he has acquired the power 
to construct, with the materials so abundantly fur- 
nished by nature, tools and implements, that still 
further greatly enlarge his correspondence with the out- 
side world. He is thus also enabled to manufacture 
from Nature's abundant matter, other clothing than his 
own skin. By constructing machinery to utilize the na- 
tural tendency of the forces of Nature, he is greatly 
aided. But his wheel must be turned by the natural flow 
of the water or wind. Steam power applied to an engine 
must follow the well known natural laws of expansion 
and condensation. No power is created. It always 
existed. The expansive power of heat moves the piston 
head and this power is conveyed by the piston rod, aided 
by a vaccuum caused by condensation of steam, to the 
point where the work is to be done. Man simply adapts 
his labor to the existing laws of natural physics and does 
not modify in the least particular the operation of any 
natural law. His dynamo must be placed in the current 
of natural change of heat to electricity and of electricity 
to power. By his ability to clothe himself and make 
fire, he is enabled to migrate to any climate or 
to any attainable altitude, and is the only animal 
capable of doing these things. This greatly en- 
larges his correspondence with Nature. This larger 
correspondence is the difference between his mentality 



LIMITATIONS AND IMPEDIMENTS 2 19 

and that of the lower animals. But when, by long and 
painful effort he makes a microscope that reveals to his 
mind by the natural laws of optics, another, and be- 
fore inconceivable world, immediately surrounding him; 
a telescope which brings within his vision a universe 
seemingly unbounded, compared with which the range 
of his natural eye is utterly insignificant, it is apparent 
how vastly and importantly his environment and his 
correspondence with it have been enlarged. He is thus 
not changing or controlling a single law of Nature, but 
by means of known natural laws, discovering those long 
existent, but before unknown to him. 

But these reveal to him no place he could attain and 
be above nature, nor any supernatural power controlling 
nature. They give him no control over the forces of 
Nature. They reveal to him what before existed prior 
to his advent on the globe, and these new discoveries 
by reacting on his nervous system, enlarge that still 
further for achievements in the same direction. They 
do not reveal to him a reality beyond appearance, and 
only teach him that still beyond their reach is a greater 
natural and material realm, without limit, the truths of 
which seem impenetrable to any contrivance within the 
constructive power of man. He not only has no power 
to change a single natural law, he cannot add to nor sub- 
tract from Nature an iota of matter or motion. He 
must adapt his brain, his ingenuity, himself, to the laws 
that nature has adopted and never changes, or his tools 
and machinery will not work. Light, heat, electricity, 
the attraction of gravitation, the indestructibility of 
matter, the persistence of force existed long before man 
appeared. He is just finding them out, and very feebly 
is adapting himself to their laws, so far to an infin- 
itesimal extent. Yet, his true line of development, his 



220 PHYSICAL BASIS OF MIND AND MORALS 

true progress, is in that perceptible realm, and not in the 
direction of the imperceptible supernatural. The occu- 
pation of his mind by the latter, in trying to discover its 
objective reality, is not only a waste of time, but prevents 
his real progress in real things. 

Another reason why scientific writers have made so 
little impression on educated minds is that the idea of 
the interference of the supernatural in human relations 
by centuries of acceptance, has become organic in men's 
thought, and gives tone and color to our whole civili- 
zation. It may be said that nearly all men, whether 
they really believe in the supernatural or not, nominally 
adopt the view, because it was taught them from child- 
hood, and they continue to believe that way in mature 
life, because it is uncomfortable and unprofitable com- 
mercially to be in the minority, and also because it is 
too fatiguing to the brain to pursue the inductive method 
necessary to connect in their minds natural cause and 
effect. The organized opposition to new ideas on these 
subjects is almost a conclusive power. When men, from 
motives of what is termed "success in life," refuse to 
investigate these questions, or refuse to declare their 
principles if opposed to the current trend, the progress 
of change from the dominant metaphysical to the scien- 
tifically reasonable will be exceedingly slow. What is 
fashionable is very hard to eradicate. We are still gov- 
erned by impulses, not reason; or rather by reason con- 
trolled by our self-interest. The molecular motion of 
our brains proceeds in the organized channels inherited 
from remote ancestry. 

As long as the supposed basis of our civilization is 
the unreal, or as long as man adjusts his laws and social 
affairs upon the presupposed, its superstructure will be 
to a certain extent a sham ; society will be controlled by 



LIMITATIONS AND IMPEDIMENTS 221 

what will glitter and dwarf, rather than by quiet, un- 
adorned mental capacity. Hence mediocrity is in the 
saddle, and wealth, the accumulation of which does not 
require high-class intellect, and which is entirely ephem- 
eral, is the badge of honor and preferment. As long as 
mankind is dominated by the idea of the supernatural, 
wealth and pretention will, and ought to be, the con- 
trolling power in society and government, and not merit 
or reason, because the latter will upset the foundation 
of the superstructure. As soon as the majority of men 
have mental power to perceive natural causes for all 
phenomena, either inorganic, organic or in the affairs of 
society, that moment monarchies will begin to crumble, 
wealth will lose its fascination, war, and in fact all mil- 
itarism, will pass away and be ranked with other bygone 
crazes, such as witchcraft, sorcery and human slavery. 
It would likely result in the same effect if all men who 
really believe in natural cause and effect would declare 
such belief. When this shall occur man will find pleas- 
ure, not so much in fiction as in the illimitable beauties 
and variety of Nature and her laws. Just as "childish" 
things are discarded by the mature, so further brain de- 
velopment will change the former views and habits. 

Man has been controlled from the beginning of his- 
torical time by the dogmatism of assumption. He 
thinks he must have a fixed, unalterable creed for his 
religious beliefs. It does not suit his present state of 
development to have any uncertainties in his creeds and 
current literature supplies him with the soothing, com- 
forting lotion of positive assumption, and in the absence 
of evidence, calls it intuition or inspiration. A belief 
in evolution means a new step in the progress of mental- 
ity. Progress means the throwing aside from day to 
day, what investigation proves untenable. The hypoth- 



222 PHYSICAL BASIS OF MIND AND MORALS 

esis of evolution has been only nominally accepted by 
the majority of educated and thinking people in the last 
few years. A few scientists, only, accept it in its full 
logical meaning. The attempt now being made by those 
interested, to treat it as a question that has no particular 
bearing upon current theology, as akin to or not more 
important than the discovery of a new planet, or as a 
new application of electricity to mechanics, who assert 
that the process was created, but not the individual 
forms, are not in accord with those who hold that evolu- 
tion necessarily undermines the whole structure of the 
supernatural. 

What is the use for the acquisition of new knowledge 
by the investigation of the facts of nature, unless we 
make a proper application of them in correcting errone- 
ous views heretofore held? All the researches of Dar- 
win would have been largely worthless unless the great 
truth of the method of natural evolution, which logic- 
ally grew out of them, had been given to the world. 
And what is the use of evolution unless we adopt and 
act upon its evident teaching of still greater truths? Tt 
would be like a community of people who resided in a 
malarial district, sending out their wisest men to dis- 
cover a more healthy region to which they might mi- 
grate, and leave their fevers and agues behind. When 
the wise men report a location where disease is un- 
known, the majority refuse to migrate, preferring to 
suffer with the chills for the sake of the remedy — 
whisky and quinine. 

Superstition today, in a less degree only than it ever 
did before, is devouring the valuable time and best 
thoughts of a large majority of the people, who nomin- 
ally acknowledge that evolution is true, yet refuse to 
part company with the old assumption of the control of 



LIMITATIONS AND IMPEDIMENTS 223 

phenomena by a supernatural cause. From the first 
book, painfully written out by the tedious process of 
hand writing, by the monks of old, who were the most 
superstitious and credulous of mankind, down to the 
latest edition of yesterday's New York dailies, the ag- 
gregate thought expressed is based upon the unques- 
tionable so-called intuition of mankind, that everything 
has been specially created. Not only the ordinary, but 
our best literature is saturated with it. No textbook 
can be introduced into the most of our common schools 
now, that casts a doubt upon it. Is it any wonder then, 
that when it is suggested to our so-called educated men 
and brightest teachers of the young, that the new the- 
ories may be true, that the answer almost invariably 
comes, "I prefer to believe that man was created in the 
Garden of Eden, and let it go at that?" Myths should 
be taught and held up as myths. Truths as truths. 

There is absolutely no further excuse for competent 
scientists to treat these great questions in a compromis- 
ing manner. They are of too great importance to the 
welfare of mankind to admit of an interpretation that 
can as well be applied to one belief as another. Even 
Darwin regretted late in life, as we learn from his pub- 
lished letters, that he had "truckled," to use his own ex- 
pression, to the prevailing sentiment. The only proper 
basis of thinking is that of inductive scientific truth; 
that is, truth established by systematic investigation 
through the senses. As previously stated, and it cannot 
be repeated too often, all true knowledge comes through 
the senses, in the shape of sensations emanating from 
objects or processes outside. The absence of real ob- 
jects causing the sensations would eventually leave the 
brain without true knowledge. It is true that the brain 
has the associative power to recall former sensations, 



224 PHYSICAL BASIS OF MIND AND MORALS 

and memory thus established, would continue as knowl- 
edge in the present mature brains should objective exist- 
ence be suddenly obliterated. But mental development 
in the just born infant would not occur. Infants would 
always remain infants. Psychology teaches that no 
ideationally initiated ideas could arise without experi- 
ence which consists in the correspondence of the indi- 
vidual with environment. It is certain that whatever 
thoughts or vagaries or imaginations man indulges in, 
when analyzed into their simple elements, are found to 
be composed of sensations or modifications of them, that 
came to the race, during its whole existence, from real 
objects in the environment. No man has ever been able 
to imagine an angel, or a spirit, or hobgoblin, or any 
myth, fable, fiction, or any other thing that was not a 
modification of some real thing, that at some time made 
a sensation through one or more of his senses, upon his 
nervous structure, or upon that of his ancestors. The 
idol of the idol worshiper, however grotesque it may ap- 
pear, is at least a faint resemblance to a man or ani- 
mal. The spiritual God of the most intellectual of man- 
kind, however far away or obscure he may be, however 
mighty, omnipotent, and omnipresent, is the enlargement 
to infinitude of the finite man. The human mind can- 
not conceive of any other God. Angels have female faces, 
wings and flowing robes. The devil himself is in the 
form of a man, with horns and a forked tail. The most 
imaginative work of fiction is simply a modification of 
the real. All this proves that the mind of man cannot 
by its utmost effort go out of the realm of the actual. 
His true knowledge consists of his correspondence with 
the natural. The chords that make that correspondence 
are the human senses, and scientific knowledge consists 
in seeing the actual, or natural, only. The inference of 



LIMITATIONS AND IMPEDIMENTS 225 

these statements should be obvious to the most casual 
thinker. 

Why should mankind longer consent to attach its 
natural code of morals, its education, its day of rest from 
labor, more than half of its printed books, in short, its 
thought, to a myth or a subjective idea, that has no in- 
ductive scientific evidence of its objective existence? 
It is a perversion of the life of man ; it excludes the study 
of the real. The universe is full of the most important 
truths, to which the most of mankind pay not the slight- 
est attention. For instance, men know so little of their 
physical organization, that half of them die in infancy, 
yet in pure superstition they will attribute death, as they 
do the origin of life, to the supernatural. For things he 
does not understand, man refuses to make any natural 
investigation, yet will devote his whole life to a blind 
belief in and pursuit of the old fallacies giving them 
the thought and study that should be devoted to the real. 
There are school districts in the United States which 
have refused within the last few years, to have modern 
geography taught, because it is in subversion of the ac- 
count in Genesis. Some colleges will not teach biology, 
as modern investigation has established it, for the same 
reason. The president of a literary club in a certain city 
refused to have evolution considered, because the Bible 
in a literal sense was not to be questioned. Politicians 
are necessarily loud in their approval of the orthodox 
view, because the majority hold it. A candidate for the 
nomination for vice-president, before one of the political 
conventions a few years ago, took occasion sometime 
since, on the lecture platform to denounce the naturalists 
of the Darwinian school because, as he conceived, they 
advocated that might is right; meaning that the law of 
natural selection, or the survival of the fittest, was that 



226 PHYSICAL BASIS OF MIND AND MORALS 

the strong will survive and the weak will die. Any one 
except an idiot can see that such is the law, whether it 
is natural or controlled by the supernatural. The facts 
as they exist are in condemnation of his own God, for 
Darwin only wrote what existed under everyone's eyes, 
and not what he would desire the facts to be. My ob- 
servation is that the advocates of, and believers in the 
Darwinian theory are, as gentle Darwin himself was, 
strongly opposed to the idea that might is right among 
mankind, in the sense that the strong should oppress the 
weak in any way. But the same politician at the same 
time was advocating, (1899), with the same gyratory 
eloquence, the expansion of the trade influence of the 
United States by the use of the military arm of the 
government in subduing weaker peoples. Thus the 
best thought of the world is stifled by misrepresentation. 
Its freedom in seeking for the truth is absolutely prohi- 
bited. No man is allowed to express other than orthodox 
views, without being made to feel the disapproval of 
the majority, whose lives are governed by the old domi- 
nance of fear. Is there anything strange, then, that 
Darwin, Spencer and Hseckel have comparatively few 
open followers and defenders? The historical fact 
that men have heretofore always been more super- 
stitious than now proves that the power of the average 
human brain to discriminate the true from the false is 
increasing. There is no question but man does the best 
in this regard that he is mentally capable of doing from 
age to age. But scientifically this condition is deplor- 
able and it is the duty of every one who clearly perceives 
the condition, to do what lies in his power to proclaim 
the facts as shown by inductive reasoning. 

It must be acknowledged, however, that the great im- 
pediment in the way of a proper conception of the rela- 



LIMITATIONS AND IMPEDIMENTS 227 

tion of subject and object is the historical fact that so- 
ciety in all its forms of government, social customs, stat- 
utory laws, literature and art is crystalized around the 
old conception of religion as worship of some personality 
outside of and more powerful than even the great forces 
of nature. Phenomena have been lost sight of in the in- 
fatuation of the masses for a form of worship or propi- 
tiation. The church, therefore, is an evolution from this, 
what is popularly called, the spirit of the people. The 
Bible is the literature of it. Cathedrals, temples, and 
fine church buildings are the physical expressions of it. 
Sunday, the only day of rest of the mass of Christendom, 
is devoted to it. The only recognized code of morals is 
attached to it. In most governments it is made national, 
and is therefore woven into the laws. The patriotism of 
the people is made to depend on it. It is a large part of 
the constitution of England. France only now has awak- 
ened from its delusion concerning it. In Buddhistic 
countries like Japan the only real thing to the masses is 
the Buddha. The individual is lost in the communal and 
the sacrifice of life upon the battlefield is only a shedding 
of the outer wrapping of the soul and its birth into a 
happier and better life. The present is of no moment. 
All effort must be for the future life, or for the transmi- 
gration of the soul into a higher organism. These teach- 
ings are fascinating to the average brain. The simple 
and guileless whose lives would be pure and beautiful 
ethically under any doctrine or system, make the delu- 
sion itself attractive and plausible. The Cotter's simple 
and pure life as depicted by Robert Burns in "Cotter's 
Saturday Night" or the faithful characters in the "Bonny 
Brier Bush" are designed by arousing the emotion of 
sympathy to make the highest intellect approve a myth 
that appears to produce such happiness and contentment. 



228 PHYSICAL BASIS OF MIND AND MORALS 

It is said the Japanese are happy, cheerful, self-denying 
to the extent of annihilating individuality and never think 
of denying the validity of the Buddha. Competition 
seems not to exist in Japan. Now are these conditions 
under both Christianity and Buddhaism the ideal ones, 
or is it better to encourage investigation and intellectual 
development? If the masses were moved in the same 
degree of enthusiasm for the investigation of natural 
cause and effect what would the effect be upon civiliza- 
tion? It is also well to remember that the cotter and all 
similar characters would likely be the same under any 
system, scientific or mythical. They are naturally organ- 
ized for a contented, simple life. They can then be elimi- 
nated from the consideration of the important question 
at issue. In contrast with the above attractive features 
that have crystallized around the supernatural cult let us 
take a glance at the obverse side of the picture — the 
spirit of intolerance that dominates the fountain heads of 
the system. 

St. George Mivart, who lately died, was an eminent 
English naturalist, and at the same time a devoted mem- 
ber of the Catholic church. In 1871, he wrote a work on 
the "Genesis of Species," in criticism of, and in opposi- 
tion to Darwin's theory of natural selection. Darwin 
noticed him as an able opponent. Just before his death, 
Mivart wrote a magazine article, catagorically reciting 
what havoc science had made with certain statements of 
the Bible, such as the whole account of the creation and 
the Garden of Eden, yet claimed in the article that there- 
by no breach had been made in what he termed the con- 
tinuity of the church. 

The Catholic bishop, under whose spiritual dominion 
Mivart lived, violently attacked him in the Catholic 
periodical, calling his integrity in question. Mivart re- 



LIMITATIONS AND IMPEDIMENTS 229 

plied, demanding a retraction of the aspersions upon his 
honor, and the bishop answered by demanding of Mivart 
a retraction of the statements in his article, and sent him 
a confession in writing, of the tenets of the Catholic 
church. Mivart had the manhood not to sign the retrac- 
tion, but was placed under the ban of the church, which 
embittered his few remaining days. 

This occurred in the year 1900. Here was a scien- 
tist of intellectual ability, who was so influenced by his 
life-long church complications, his family being devotees 
also, of that faith, that he refused to see the logical con- 
sequences of his own investigations. The statements he 
made in his article swept away the very foundations of 
the Catholic church, and yet he insisted that they made 
no breach in its continuity. What he should have done, 
was to acknowledge the logical results of his scientific 
investigations, and say that he could not consistently re- 
main in the church. He should have stated the truth as 
he scientifically saw it, and should have declared that he 
saw no evidence, and could not believe in the control of 
a supernatural power. This would have given him the 
respect of all sides to his memory, which he now fails 
to have. 

There is no half way station from the tenets of the 
Catholic church to the free realm of scientific phenom- 
enism. The continual effort to reconcile the truth to the 
assumption, will forever prove futile. Yet if it be true, 
which I doubt, that most mankind must have the restrain- 
ing influence of the church to keep them from committing 
crimes, then let the church continue for these until the 
descendants of these become, by heredity and education, 
convinced that doing right for the right's sake, will best 
serve any God whether natural or supernatural. 

The real question is how to produce an uncatas- 



230 PHYSICAL BASIS OF MIND AND MORALS 

trophic change. Surely not by open defiance and so- 
called blasphemy. Not ridicule ; not controversy. Con- 
troversy is the continued re-adjustment of definitions to 
fit the preconceived ideas of the asserter of the theory, 
or to ward off the ingenious objections of the adversary. 
Great truths have been established by induction only. 
This is the way the Copernican system of astronomy, the 
attraction of gravitation, the evolution by natural selec- 
tion have been established. It can not be done by direct 
attack, but by making plain the facts of the opposite 
truth. There must be a natural cause, the want of in- 
clination to experiment founded on the principles of evo- 
lution itself, which produces such beliefs, when the whole 
world at a certain stage of its evolution adopts them. 
Their evolution has been slow, so must their decay be 
equally slow, because sudden changes are always fol- 
lowed by as sudden reactions and natural evolution does 
not operate suddenly. But nevertheless, their decay 
seems sure. Their existence depends upon ignorance of 
the true sources of human development, and consequent- 
ly of the objects of life. Education should be directed to 
the natural — to the meaning of the great principle of 
evolution in all its phases. For the principle of evolu- 
tion, which is now accepted as established as unquestion- 
ably as gravitation, entirely subverts the whole accepted 
theories of life and conduct heretofore held. 

No sane man wants suddenly to upset the organized 
beliefs of the world, even if he had the power to do so, 
but the masses must gradually be educated into a con- 
stant study of the natural causes, and as fast as they per- 
ceive that there is a natural cause for every phenomenon, 
the supernatural, before in possession of the mind, will 
fade away; until then there may be reason for the con- 
stabulary of the church. Many scientific men make the 



LIMITATIONS AND IMPEDIMENTS 231 

great mistake of supposing that this advance can be ac- 
complished by endeavoring to reconcile scientific truths 
with old geocentric ideas. When the descent of man was 
placed upon an evolutionary basis every writer, who was 
convinced of this process, should have at once stated that 
his special creation was a fiction. The work must be 
bravely prosecuted in a proper manner, by the successors 
of such scientific pioneers as Copernicus, Gallileo, New- 
ton, Darwin, Spencer and Huxley. Herbert Spencer has 
done a wonderful thing to uncover the false and disclose 
the truth, by writing his great work, "The Synthetic 
Philosophy." His readers are few, because the thinking 
of mankind heretofore has been along lines so different 
from his that most men do not know what he means. 
They cannot comprehend that what has heretofore been 
assumed, without a thought otherwise, to be the work 
of the supernatural, has really had a natural and explain- 
able cause, comprehensible upon proper investigation by 
ordinary minds. He necessarily abandons the old term- 
inology and uses new terms to express causes and effects 
not before treated in books. 

All that is necessary is to induce the people to read 
standard works on astronomy, geology, biology, psychol- 
ogy and natural ethics. When the works of Darwin and 
Spencer on evolution, Huxley on the "Physical Basis of 
Life," Hseckel's works, and Ribot's psychological works 
shall be studied by the people there is little doubt about 
the gradual establishment of the conception of a natural 
cause, as the former conception of the supernatural fades 
away, before the inductive reasoning of these great au- 
thors. In other words, the erroneous theological beliefs 
of a people are only changed by education along scien- 
tific lines in the great realm of nature; not by contro- 
versy over technicalities, nor by showing the literary 



232 PHYSICAL BASIS OF MIND AND MORALS 

falsity of human history. When the intellect is thus con- 
vinced, there is little danger of a reaction upon character 
in way of abandonment of the moral code. 

Whoever has intellect enough to comprehend the full 
meaning of the theory of evolution, also will perceive 
that the wholesome checks heretofore given by the pre- 
vailing theology through the simple emotions of fear, 
anger, affection and the sexual feeling, and their num- 
erous and complex combinations in the human organism, 
are not indissolubly connected with supernatural beliefs, 
but must be as a matter of self-preservation, as well as 
a wholesome regulation of society, perpetuated under any 
and every system of belief. A system of natural ethics, 
fitted to the highest welfare of the human race, will nat- 
urally grow out of a true conception of the laws of na- 
ture and man's evolutionary relation thereto. 

But if a man, who has heretofore kept the letter of 
the decalogue, simply because it is prescribed by a sup- 
posed supernatural being, who has the power and incli- 
nation to punish him in some unnatural way for viola- 
tions becomes convinced suddenly without intellectual or 
scientific evolution into a higher conception that the dec- 
alogue has not the high origin and support attributed to 
it, he is very liable to conclude there is no morality, and 
act accordingly. 

Therefore the only hope is to educate simultaneously 
along the parallel lines of natural phenomena, sociology, 
and ethics. Spencer's "Synthetic Philosophy" only in- 
cludes biology, psychology, sociology, and ethics. But 
as there were already prior competent works on physics, 
treating of the nebular theory, including astronomy, 
chemistry, geology, etc., it was not necessary for Mr. 
Spencer to include them in his system. But a complete, 
a rounded and all sufficing education that will teach the 



LIMITATIONS AND IMPEDIMENTS 233 

man, first the significance of Nature's perpetual appari- 
tion, and second, his proper relation thereto including 
his relation to his fellow-man as a part of phenomena, is 
absolutely necessary to that highest and best life, in 
which men will do the right for right's sake. 

It has been said that if man is an evolution and all 
his psychical processes are functions of his material body, 
he is not a free agent and must be irresponsible for most 
of his acts. He is responsible only to the natural laws 
of his evolution. The word "responsible" implies man's 
dependence on a superior personality who determines 
what his punishment for violation shall be. But if Na- 
ture only reacts on his body for violations, the word re- 
sponsible is not applicable. An insane man is not respon- 
sible to society for his acts. Yet, he is practically pun- 
ished by being confined in an asylum. In the popular 
acceptation of the word man is not responsible for his 
birth, location upon this globe, his heredity, the size of 
his brain, body, hands, and feet. Neither is he responsi- 
ble for any variation in structure and consequent peculiar- 
ity of character, which his ancestors did not have. Yet 
it is obvious that if this variation is not useful to him in 
the struggle for existence, he must suffer for it. This 
is a law of Nature, and while it may seem unjust to the 
individual, yet it is mercy to the race, because the elimi- 
nation of the weak and unfit is absolutely necessary for 
the welfare of the whole. In all forms of life, vegetable 
and animal, immense numbers never arrive at maturity. 
In fact very few survive to perpetuate themselves. The 
greatest seeming waste is in the vegetable kingdom, but 
all through every grade of animal life up to complex 
man, the principle holds good that the individual is sac- 
rificed to the welfare of the race. Seton Thompson says 
that no wild animal dies a natural death. How many of 



234 PHYSICAL BASIS OF MIND AND MORALS 

the human race die in infancy? Those that do so, are in 
some way unfit ; that is, when certain tests are applied to 
them by the inexorable chemistry of Nature, they prove 
unequal to the test. In other words, Nature holds the-m 
responsible for all natural violation of her laws. It is 
evident that men are not free enough agents to avoid 
these every day occurrences. 

In some way their organizations are out of proper 
correspondence with the requirements of life. In many 
individuals, this fact would be very difficult to reason out, 
or to detect just at what physical point this want of cor- 
respondence occurred, but undoubtedly that theory con- 
tains less doubts and uncertainties in explanation of the 
facts than any other that we can adopt. Of a thousand 
human beings born, suppose only one lives to be eighty 
years old. It is scarcely possible that the ablest physi- 
cian could at the beginning of the thousand lives have 
selected the one to survive. During an epidemic like 
cholera, certain ones are affected with it. Some of these 
survive and the others die. Why is it that a large num- 
ber seemingly equally exposed do not have the disease, 
and why do only some of those who are attacked sur- 
vive, while the others die? Is it not something in their 
complicated organisms, difficult to be observed by the 
common eye, out of harmony with their environment, 
that causes the deaths? Any latent weakness of any of 
the organs of the body by which the functions of the 
organs are weakened constitutes their want of corre- 
spondence with the environment; in this sense the word 
"environment" has a very wide and significant meaning. 
All disease and all weakness of every nature are impair- 
ments of that correspondence, which a strong and per- 
fect organism maintains with equal strength and perfec- 
tion with his perpetual environment. The brain that 



LIMITATIONS AND IMPEDIMENTS 235 

does not perceive the true cause of every effect, is in pre- 
cisely the same manner wanting in proper correspond- 
ence with its perpetual environment. The action of such 
a brain is subjective only, whenever it attributes to a 
fanciful and unknown cause, any natural effect. That 
is, it is out of correspondence with any objective cause 
for objective phenomena. The punishment follows nat- 
urally whether the individual is what is called a free 
agent or the product of evolution. 

That is, the facts above recited are occurring habit- 
ually in spite of the asserted personal control from 
above. They are consistent with the theory of evolution, 
but not with the theory of an all-wise and loving care by 
a personality. 

England claims to be the highest type of the Anglo- 
Saxon race. Yet, the United States fortunately in the 
commencement of its career as a nation, discarded the 
Norman pomp and ceremony of church and militarism, 
which still cling to England, by separating church and 
state, and by choosing the freedom of the simplicity of 
republicanism, rather than the feudal relics of nominal 
monarchy and titled nobility. To this extent, and it was 
an immense advance, we are on the true road to natural 
civilization. 

One impediment still remaining in our country is that, 
while theoretically there is freedom of thought on relig- 
ious matters and while in name, and in many respects in 
reality, we have free churches, free schools, and free 
speech, yet a majority of the people as individuals and as 
organized societies, have retained the spirit of exclusive- 
ness and proscription which our fathers intended to pre- 
vent by the words of the Constitution. Religion is not 
free until there shall be no question made as to a man's 
opinion upon such matters, provided he maintains the 



236 PHYSICAL BASIS OF MIND AND MORALS 

character of a moral and upright citizen. The higher 
criticism should be encouraged. Schools are not free, 
until they are open to the proper investigation of all sub- 
jects, sacred and secular, along the lines of true scien- 
tific methods. The test of morality should be a man's 
attitude toward his fellowman and all animal life on the 
globe, in short, his attitude in general to his environment, 
not his beliefs or unbeliefs in the supernatural. 

It is evident to the most casual observer, that the pre- 
vailing curriculum of school and college, does not suffi- 
ciently teach these truths. The classical and mathemat- 
ical course does not reach them, and it occurs to me that 
this course is perhaps unconsciously maintained largely 
because it does not lead the mind away from the estab- 
lished conception of the reign of an imaginary supernat- 
uralism. 

Andrew D. White, in his wonderful book, "The War- 
fare of Science and Theology," shows that the world 
today would be held in the strong grip of the most dis- 
gusting theological superstition of the earliest ages, if 
the church, either Catholic or Protestant, could have had 
its way; and that every step of emancipation from such 
ignorant thralldom has been forced upon theology by 
the investigation of scientific men. None but those who 
have made such advances, as will enable them to com- 
prehend such writings, and do the right for the right's 
sake, should make this change of belief, and in reality 
none others will. Of course, there are a large number 
who refuse to be restrained in their desire to do wrong, 
by the fears and espionage of the church even, or by any 
other organized constabulary, and who have no intellect- 
ual conception of the real situation. But these will re- 
main nominally under the control of the old belief and 
its code of morals and also under the ban of human laws. 



LIMITATIONS AND IMPEDIMENTS 237 

Those who are incapable of thinking, as well as those 
who refuse to think upon so momentous a question, may 
as well be eliminated from the problem. 

All people should do their own thinking and investi- 
gating, and not hand that duty over to a special class es- 
tablished and protected in many countries by the laws 
whose prime interest as professionals is to preserve the 
old assumptions; who must necessarily oppose all educa- 
tion, destined eventually to undermine the superstitions 
still saturating human conceptions. 



CHAPTER X 



SUMMARY 



The foregoing chapters contain only the merest oat- 
line of the great principles of Phenomenism. They are 
designed merely to suggest. Knowing what mere sug- 
gestion will do in the subjects of hypnotism and som- 
nambulism, it leads one to reflect that perhaps those 
brains uneducated in science, but properly organized, 
may be induced by these outlines to a more profound in- 
vestigation oi these great truths. There are certain 
points casually referred to that should be further elabo- 
rated, and in doing so it may be well to summarize the 
facts and arguments. 

In the realm of phenomena there are only two phases 
— self and not-self. The perceiver and the objective phe- 
nomena perceived are the fundamental aspects of one 
great truth — >the integration and dissipation of some 
thing, which for a better definition we divide into two 
aspects, called matter and motion. What these are in 
reality the organism called self has no peripheral sense 
organs, and, of course, no corresponding brain centers, 
capable of cognizing. But scientists are fast conclud- 
ing that they are one in reality. The hypothesis has 
been formulated that whatever this oneness of mat- 
ter and motion may be it probably had no origin, and 
that in its primitive state it was a nebula of attenu- 
ated gas, from which by the laws of energy the 
present solar system and all systems in the universe 



SUMMARY 239 

have been evolved. This original nebula was com- 
posed of either atoms or centers of energy. The 
fundamental property of these centers of energy is con- 
densation. Hence the condensation of the nebulous mat- 
ter into the globes now moving in space and all the phe- 
nomena thence resulting have been simply the operation 
of a principle immanent in the matter itself. The globe 
on which we dwell is a condensed portion of a nebula. 
The sun and the other planets of the solar system, in- 
cluding the asteroids, are the remaining parts of the same 
nebula. The sun is still condensing and the heat of it 
is produced by the arrested motion of the atoms in pro- 
cess of condensation. All these bodies are composed of 
essentially the same elements, and these elements are the 
chemical combinations of the original atoms, or centers 
of energy, in proportions varying with the nature of the 
resulting element. After the earth had attained its pres- 
ent outlines, density, temperature, and differentiated its 
components into what are commonly called solid, fluid 
and gaseous, that is, into earth, air and water, life began 
to appear in the lowly forms of vegetation. From this 
humble beginning all the forms of the vegetable king- 
dom and the animal kingdom have been slowly evolved. 
This evolution has occurred from the homogeneous to 
the heterogeneous in apparently an undesigned progres- 
sion from the simple to the complex, not in a straight 
and unswerving upward line, but by rhythm of motion, 
which seems to be functional and universal in all natural 
phenomena. 

This progressive evolution of life forms is accom- 
plished by the methods of heredity and variation. These 
two laws operate effectively in producing more and more 
complex organisms by eliminating the weak, by a process 
which we call death. A constant alternation of develop- 



240 PHYSICAL BASIS OF MIND AND MORALS 

ment by integration of matter, and death by dissipation 
of it, during which the motion or function accompany- 
ing the two opposite methods undergoes the reverse proc- 
ess, has been going on from the formation of the first 
vegetable cell to the present time. This integration of 
organic matter occurs by a multiplication of cells and a 
differentiation of the growth into the heterogeneousness 
of organisms. Thus the great variety of species now ex- 
isting have been produced by the adaptation of an occa- 
sional variation in the anatomy and a corresponding vari- 
ation in the physiology of the hereditary forms. When- 
ever the variation proved of benefit to its possessor in its 
struggle for existence, that organism proved more likely 
than its less favored companions to live and multiply. 
This is the principle of natural selection in the struggle 
for existence, and is the theory now generally held by 
scientists as one most likely to account for the evolution 
of new species. 

As Charles R. Darwin and Herbert Spencer were the 
two most conspicuous champions in the world of science 
of the theory of evolution a chapter is devoted to each 
of them. It is not necessary here to enlarge upon what 
is said in those chapters. Both have written elaborately 
and from different standpoints the most logical and con- 
vincing treatises on evolution. Mr. Darwin's "Origin 
of Species" was epoch making. Mr. Spencer's "Syn- 
thetic Philosophy" extended the application of the prin- 
ciples of evolution to Psychology, Sociology and Ethics. 
Lifting these sciences from the hopeless chaos of former 
a priori theories to the high plane of scientific treatment, 
he brought them into the reach of common sense. From 
the meaningless gropings of so-called intuitions and 
supernatural origins he brought the study of the human 
mind for the first time to the basis of function of nerve 






SUMMARY 



241 



structure in its relation through the sense organs with 
objective environment. 

The evolution of what is called physical life has long 
been recognized and acquiesced in by the educated the- 
ologian. But for a long time after this acquiescence the 
psychical life was still deemed unexplainable by natural 
laws. Modern psychology, however, has demonstrated 
the dependence of psychical, or as formerly called mental 
life upon the physical, and that these phenomena are as 
much under the operation of natural law as is physical 
life. This is so whether psychology is to be considered 
a science in itself or a branch of physiology. Whether 
we view mentality as like or unlike the condition we 
call matter, yet the facts show that the reality of 
one is as inscrutable as that of the other. They so 
perceptibly fuse that it is impossible to distinguish the 
line of separation. The substrate of mental operations, 
as Wundt calls the nervous structure, is so defined as 
matter as to pass through certain motions simultane- 
ously with every psychical phenomenon. This phenom- 
enon is so closely connected with the motion of the nerve 
tissue as not to be distinguished as a separate existence. 
The complexity of the matter is perfectly parallel with 
the complexity of the phenomenon. The effect of the 
molecular motion of the living nerve tissue is the men- 
tality and without this motion it is not apparent to the 
senses. In fact we do not perceive anything in the 
operation except some material fact, i. e. the movements, 
of the material body in thinking, in articulating or writing 
words, or in muscular motion. The whole perceptible 
operation of reasoning is the production of images and 
the fusing of them in the brain cortex. These images 
are produced by molecular motion or a movement of 
nerve elements similar thereto. 



242 PHYSICAL, BASIS OF MIND AND MOKAL,S 

So it is of the utmost importance that the phenomen- 
ism of mentality or consciousness be largely considered 
in its relation to its substrate of neural structure and 
in its conformity to the natural laws of evolution. For 
if it is a function of neural structure and in its more 
complex and obscure form is never manifested except in 
connection with a like complex and obscure physical 
structure well known to brain anatomists as the prosen- 
cephalon, then it must be deemed as much a product of 
natural evolution as the prosecephalon is. Here sci- 
ence finds as in the physical realm, only phenomena and 
postulates only a reign of natural law. Not only the 
normal workings of the psychical life, but the abnormal 
phenomena, such as illusions, hallucinations, hypnotic 
states, somnambulism, etc. are shown by the experiments 
of the psychologists to be explainable by natural law, 
not as the work of a supernatural demon or evil spirit. 
The idea that any psychical phenomena, although so 
faint as to be called subconscious and therefore very ob- 
scure, can have a doubtful thither side opening into a 
supernatural realm is a surrender of the postulate of the 
universal reign of natural law in all phenomena. The 
so-called supernatural phenomena of religious conver- 
sion, the spiritual vision, etc., are natural abnormal psy- 
chical phenomena explainable as the psychology of reli- 
gion. It would appear that these historico-abnormalities 
are much less common than formerly. Later, by the 
evolution of more intellect, under which the emotions 
will be better controlled, these abnormal manifestations 
will altogether cease. The joy one feels in the attain- 
ment of any much desired condition, such as the control 
of his appetites and passions, or the discovery of a new 
thought, or a new method in political economy by which 
the material, ethical, or aesthetic condition of mankind 



SUMMARY 



can be changed for the better, depends in its outward 
motor acts altogether upon the control the intellect has 
of the emotions. 

All real progress is a natural process of reasoning by 
which one is converted to a new belief from a former 
one. Reasoning being the fusing of images naturally 
made upon the brain, whether real or hallucinative, all 
conversions secular or religious are psychologically alike. 
Whatever appears supernatural in the sudden change in 
psychical life can be paralleled in the mystery once sur- 
rounding certain physical phenomena whose natural 
cause is now well understood. 

Since Herbert Spencer wrote upon these subjects all 
thinkers have modified their views of them. "Faculties" 
have given place to brain function. "Mind" and "soul" 
have been transformed to consciousness. "Reason," 
"Memory," "Imagination," "Will" are presentations or 
images fusing with immediate sensations forming phys- 
iologically those psychological effects named perceptions, 
conceptions, and ideas. The self is no longer an entity 
that thinks. "I think" as a phrase is imperceptibly fad- 
ing into the more logical and rational "it thinks" — being 
the reactions of brain structure to sensations and images. 
We cognize not by intuition but by the physiological 
exercise of the old fashioned senses of touch, sight, 
hearing, taste and smell. Our instincts are inherited 
automatic reflexes of nerve structure. The emotions are 
the same. In short, all former so-called mental acts are 
the reactions of the brain centers to sensations by which 
such centers are indifferently excited to produce images 
of former like sensations. These images fusing produce 
a new and different image which is the idea, the per- 
ception, the conception, the abstraction, or the motor ac- 
tion. Of course, there are idealists yet existing who 



244 PHYSICAL BASIS OF MIND AND MORALS 

refuse to believe that these psychic effects can be pro- 
duced by the machinery of the nerve structure. They 
say the psychic phenomena are accompanied by a nerve 
motion, but the two are only parallel and simultaneous, 
that the two operations are independent. They say that 
a machine that turns out a piece of cloth different in 
pattern from the material put in is not the maker of the 
pattern. True, but the human brain is the maker of 
both the machine and the pattern. This fact is apparent 
to the senses, but the patterns of the images of the brain 
are not seen by us to be made by a supernatural being. 
The machine is composed of matter the same as 
the brain is, but it is inorganic and stable; where- 
as the brain is composed of organic matter and Is 
very unstable. It is very responsive to incident forces 
such as light, heat, and all forms of cosmic energy. 
Therefore its product is psychical, that is lighter, less 
palpable, less apparent than that of a machine made 
of steel. The illustration of the machine turning 
out patterns of cloth, is parallel with Paley's il- 
lustration of the same principle by the watch. It pre- 
supposes a personal maker. This maker in the form of 
man is cognized through our senses. But the assumed 
maker of natural phenomena is not thus cognized, and 
Cardinal Newman said he could not be the result of 
human reasoning. He is only the hope of faith. There- 
fore the illustration not being consistent in its parts fails 
as a proof. No one objects to the assumptions of faith 
as long as they are confined to that basis. But when an 
objective supernatural entity is proposed on the proof of 
human production, the sensory proof must be demanded. 
The limitations of human knowledge are the result 
of man's nervous structure and its limited correspondence 
with environment, through the five peripheral sense 



SUMMARY 245 

organs. These sense organs receive impressions from 
phenomena only. The resulting images formed on the 
cortex of the brain centers and fusing into perception, 
conception and reason are not the images of final cause, 
or ultimate reality, but of relativity only. We do not 
perceive the thing itself but only certain attributes or 
properties, such as form, color, resistance, motion, sound, 
odor and taste. We know ourselves only by the func- 
tions of our bodies. What we have been calling mind 
is not a thing in itself, but is best perceived as a phe- 
nomenal ego, because its psychical phenomena only are 
apparent to our senses. Consciousness is a condition 
ever varying, produced by the images above spoken of, 
forming and reforming in the sensory centers, by the 
incidence of objective forces. 

In ordinary conversation and in nearly all literature, 
the mind is spoken of as a producing entity. Language 
has been evolved from this conception. That is, there 
is very little language capable of expressing other than 
the idea of entity and the power of that entity to pro- 
duce the psychic phenomena every moment observed. 
For instance the phenomenon of "absent mindedness" is 
ordinarily spoken of as the wandering of the mind. That 
is, it is a thing — an entity — that moves away from the 
body, or at least leaves the object to which the eyes, or 
some of the senses, is directed. This language does not 
express the psychical phenomenon taking place. That is 
a process unconsciously and instantaneously occurring in 
the appropriate brain centers, but which in consequence 
of its being heretofore unknown to the real makers of 
language, viz : the masses of articulate beings, requires 
a new application of words in a very unusual and long 
drawn out combination. In reading a book, for exam- 
ple, the flow of thought is. maintained by a constant sue- 



246 PHYSICAL BASIS OF MIND AND MORALS 

cession of sensations of the letters and their combina- 
tions into words, first on the retina and thence trans- 
ferred to the optical centers of the grey cortex upon 
which the image of them is formed. These sensitive 
images call up or excite by the law of association other 
similar images, but connected or fused with these latter 
images are all the images of former sensations called ex- 
periences with these same letters and words, by which 
the meaning of them have been derived, such as the 
touch of books, the hearing of definitions of teachers, 
and all the mechanism of school education. These 
images of former sensations by similarity and contiguity 
have fused into a new associative image which being 
similar to the image immediately produced by the pres- 
ent sensation coming from the book fuses also with that 
and forms a resulting image called a perception. This 
is the continual psychical process of forming thoughts 
upon not only the contents of a book in reading, but 
upon any objective thing capable of producing a sensa- 
tion upon the peripheral sense organs and through them 
upon the brain. Now, if the associative image thus 
formed from past experiences happens to be so dissimilar 
to the present sensitive image, as not to fuse with it, 
the resulting perception of the idea intended to be con- 
veyed by the language of the book does not take place 
and the attention is absorbed with the non-fusing image 
of memory — the mind is said to "wander from the sub- 
ject." It is plain that the latter term being based upon 
the conception of the mind as an entity which directly 
produced the conception is comprehensible to every one 
who takes this view of the nature of the mind. And be- 
ing concise as well as comprehensible is the one com- 
monly used. It is further plain that until the majority 
of those who make and use language, comprehend the 






SUMMARY 247 

scientific and actual process of the nervous functioning 
of thought and reasoning, there will be little effort to 
frame a language that will convey that idea in the short 
method expressed by the term "the mind wanders." But 
the evolution of language is trending in that direction. 
The evolution follows the idea and something like this 
will express the true idea, viz. : instead of saying "the 
mind wanders" it will be "a new image absorbs the at- 
tention." But this will not occur until the principles of 
physiological-psychology are nearly as well understood 
as is now the theological or ordinary conception of mind. 
The same argument will apply to all phenomenism. The 
scientific view of all phenomena must replace the present 
views, before language can be changed from the present 
short cut but expressive terms of present perception, to 
equally short cut and expressive terms of a scientific per- 
ception. There lies beneath consciousness a slumbering 
knowledge that is aroused only by the image of words 
so arranged as to embody the elements, or at least one 
element of that knowledge. This is the result of former 
work in investigation of analogous theses, — the residuum 
of education in science. 

Untrained minds are incapable of understanding the 
meaning of a profound treatise. Words alone cannot con- 
vey the meaning without the previous work in the intel- 
lectual field. A trained mind is therefore in correspond- 
ence with a more complex and subtler environment, one 
that brings to such a mind a wealth of discernment and 
comprehension far beyond the reach of those less edu- 
cated. But there must always exist a structural adapta- 
tion to such training before the organized memory can 
be established. Otherwise the conceptual images will 
never — however long and. arduous the training — coalesce 
into reason and will. Hence the substrate, as Wundt 



248 PHYSICAL BASIS OF MIND AND MORALS 

calls the nerve tissue, is the all important and abiding 
half of mentality. If this structure is lacking no amount 
of training will suffice to make potent the psychic phe- 
nomenon which Wundt seems to think is independent of 
organic substance. Neither will the cosmic energy that 
assumes through the persistence of force such a multi- 
plicity of effects in nature ever assume the psychic form 
now commonly called the human mentality in this high- 
est form of organized memory, unless by way of nerve 
tissue in the cerebral centers. 

Phenomenism is the psychological condition existing, 
being the correspondence between the individual and his 
environment. It is also denned as self and not-self. 
Not-self is the realm of phenomena objective to our 
sense organs and reaches all things making sensations 
or images on the brain centers, from the rays of the 
farthest fixed stars to the subtlest reasonings and the 
most aesthetic judgments, as well as the most altruistic 
relationships implied in the expression "The Brotherhood 
of Man." Therefore it is this realm of phenomenism 
that should receive the direct attention of consciousness. 
It is all that is really knowable. To keep in proper 
correspondence with it is the highest wisdom and the 
only preventive of illusion and delusion. He who con- 
fines his attention to it is sane. All life depends on this 
correspondence. In this sense the term life includes 
every phase of physical and psychical phenomena, viz. : 
those aspects of life treated in biology, psychology, soci- 
ology, and ethics. There is unity not only in body and 
"mind," but in the laws of society and of ethics. 

The scientific definition of one is the proper designa- 
tion of all. Therefore a sensible code of ethics is the 
natural correspondence of self with not-self, just as the 
proper definition of social law is the correspondence be- 



SUMMARY 249 

tween each individual and that part of his environment 
included in the term mankind. Education upon these 
vital topics must therefore be confined to the knowable 
realm of phenomena. It was a mistake for Herbert 
Spencer to make a part of his "Synthetic Philosophy" 
his first part of "First Principles" entitled the "Un- 
knowable Absolute." He states in his autobiography 
that he saw this mistake only • when it was too late to 
correct it, and that the conception of an "Unknowable 
Absolute" is no part of his philosophy. Part I of "First 
Principles" did not have the effect he intended, but ob- 
scured in the minds of his theological readers the true 
basis of his great work, viz : the natural biological evolu- 
tion of all psychic, social, and moral conditions in the 
organic world. The "Synthetic Philosophy" really be- 
gins with Part II of "First Principles," entitled the 
"Knowable." 

The beliefs of man depend upon the development of 
his brain structure. His discrimination between the true 
and false depends upon the images recalled by sensation 
upon the patterns of nerves in the higher centers, and 
the coalescing of these images into other conditions 
called perception. It is a process of reasoning which de- 
pends upon the quality of his brain and the perfection of 
his past experience; that is, the quality of his education 
in the past. But the education of the past has been 
largely confined to either immaterial things or supernat- 
ural objectivity, or to the realm of the unknowable. As 
said in one of the chapters, mankind has been in the at- 
titude of childhood on all these questions. It readily be- 
lieved anything concerning the reign of the supernatural 
that was solemnly asserted by either writers or speakers, 
who appeared to have a little more learning and boldness 
than the masses. This condition of helpless mental de- 



250 PHYSICAL BASIS OF MIND AND MORALS 

pendence, is the same as that of childhood, which be- 
lieves in the actual reality of Santa Claus. The child 
grows out of this belief and is finally convinced that the 
saint of gifts is only a subjective generic image of a 
generous giver of good things. The same knowledge 
will come in time to the brain of mankind concerning all 
supernatural subjective ideas. It is not necessary to per- 
sonify righteousness in order to believe in it. Neither 
is it required that psychical phenomena should be given 
a supernatural cause in order to impress their power, 
beauty, utility and adaptability upon man. Natural cause 
and effect will produce greater impression. The former 
condition is rapidly changing now. There is now an 
environment of scientific literature upon these questions 
which fifty years ago did not exist and more and more 
of attention is being given every year, by students, to 
natural phenomena. While much of former educational 
influences still linger even in the methods and ideas of 
the ablest scientists, yet the leaven of phenomenism is 
working. The known principles of evolution demand 
that the probable changes in beliefs work slowly in order 
not to be catastrophic in their affects upon future so- 
ciety. 

One of the essentials of human knowledge mentioned 
in Chapter 5, is that impressions must be made upon the 
peripheral organs by objectivity as a pre-requisite to 
knowledge. These sensations are conveyed by the 
nerves from the organs of sense to the neural patterns 
of the brain and are there transformed into images of 
the objective things from which the sensations are de- 
rived. In the infant brain the image other than color is 
comparatively meaningless. But in the mature mind it 
immediately excites a molecular motion which produces 
another fainter image similar to the first. This is so 



SUMMARY 251 

readily produced that the process is unconscious. The 
second image is a reproduction of a former experience 
of similar sensations, and if the two images are exactly 
similar they at once fuse and form a perception of the 
entire thing in the environment in its generic character. 
The whole process down to the final perception is so 
instantaneous as to be unconscious and therefore im- 
presses the ordinary brain as being not physiological and 
natural, but as supernatural. 

Said M. Taine, "Just as the body is a polypus of cells, 
the mind is a polypus of images." Each sense forms 
images, these being visual, auditory, tactile, motor, etc. 
The type of the image resulting from the fusing of these 
images, i. e. the percept, depends upon the type of the 
organism. The degree of perfection of the nerve struc- 
ture determines the type of the image. The images so 
called by some psychologists are the same as the feelings 
described by others and are the result of a process of 
nerve molecular motion which we interpret as reasoning. 
"The image is a phenomenon which results from an ex- 
citation of the sensory centers of the cortex." "Reason- 
ing is a synthesis of images." * 

But if the image is an essential element of human 
knowledge, it must be produced by a sensation from a 
real thing. How then can the induced hallucinations of 
the subject of hypnotism be explained? The experi- 
mentor in hypnotism makes the subject see or feel or 
hear a thing that does not exist. Likewise the hallu- 
cinations of the insane are real images produced by the 
diseased conductive paths of association upon the brain 
centers, not by a demon in the supernatural realm. In 
the subject of hypnotism the first image may be pro- 



Alfred Binet, "Psychology of Reasoning." P. 31. 



252 THYSlCAIv BASIS OF MIND AND MORALS 

duced on the auditory center by the suggestion of the 
operator, e. g., that the subject is a king. The con- 
ductive cross fibers from the visual center* are imme- 
diately excited by the auditory image to produce any 
former experiences the subject may have had by seeing 
or reading of a king and his retinue — in short, all the ac- 
companiments and surroundings of royalty. The variety 
and complexity of the associative image will depend on 
the intelligence of the subject. The absurdity and in- 
congruousness of the image, that is, its departure from 
the normal, will depend on the degree of lesion of the 
brain centers excited to the production of images. It is 
in no sense supernatural. The voice of the opeiator is 
the exciting cause. 

Binet and Fere have proved by experiments in hyp- 
notism in the Salpetriere at Paris, France, that the hal- 
lucinations are images formed upon the sensory centers. 
It is the same with illusions of the sane, e. g. when one 
person is mistaken for another. The similarity of the im- 
mediate image formed upon the visual center, to the one 
it recalls from memory, produces the conclusion that 
they are one and the same, by the two images perfectly 
fusing. The illusion is not dissipated until a new image 
formed by a closer inspection produces a new and truer 
perception of the true objective. But the hallucination 
whether produced in hypnotism, insanity, or in mistaken 
identity brings no knowledge, because it lacks the es- 
sential element of truthful objectivity. 

The importance of this process of sensation and 
images resulting from the conveyance of the sensation 



^"To know, to understand, to explain, to know the why 
and the how of things — all this culminates in an act of vision." 
Alfred Binet in "Psychology of Reasoning." P. 172. 



SUMMARY 253 

to the central cortex and of the memory of former sen- 
sations cannot well be overstated, because memory re- 
places the absent sensation and is thus a supplementary 
sense. It is also reasoning freed from the condition of 
time and space.* Memory is the seeing of the past as 
if it were in the present, and reasoning being a passage 
from the known to the unknown is seeing the future. 
Perception being the product of three images, is parallel 
with the three terms of a syllogism and is thus the result 
of reasoning and is the same as knowledge. 

. A criticism made upon the chapter treating of a nat- 
ural code of ethics, is that the author ignores the phil- 
osophy of history when he minimizes the influence of 
religion upon mankind. The gist of the criticism is that 
upon the whole the aggregate influence of the church 
and all religions has been to raise men to a higher stand- 
ard of morality and right action. The influence of the 
Christian religion was exerted in the churches by the 
constant preaching — the perpetual iteration and reitera- 
tion — of first, the creation of man perfect in the garden 
of Eden by a personal creator of the universe; man's 
fall; his eventual annihilation by a flood, leaving only 
Noah and his family. When after several centuries the 
descendants of Noah still remained as wicked as the de- 
scendants of Adam had been, God sent his only begot- 
ten Son, Jesus, to die for the redemption of man. That 
man in order to avoid, the fate of the damned must 
repent voluntarily, or be converted. This in short is 
the Christian code of doctrine. The evidence of con- 
version was to keep the decalogue, to which Jesus added 
the golden rule and the sermon on the mount, both of 
which appear to have been the essentials of all religions. 



* Alfred Binet, "Psychology of Reasoning/' P. 165. 



254 PHYSICAL BASIS OF MIND AND MORALS 

The result was the so-called present Christian civiliza- 
tion. That is, such civilization as we have is crystallized 
around the emotions of fear in the first instance and af- 
fection as secondary. But mingled with this subjective 
conception of the supernatural, and really underlying it, 
is the great natural principle of evolution that has been, 
although unrecognized as such, the natural force that 
has evolved the brain of man, through all its heretofore 
uncertain and partial correspondence with natural phe- 
nomena, to its present more complex correspondence, in 
spite of its hallucinations that it was possessed of sen- 
sory correspondence with the supernatural. As long as 
this hallucination lingers in man's brain the resulting 
civilization is perhaps the best that we can expect. At 
least the advocates of evolution must assume that this 
artificial and evanescent but widespread human orienta- 
tion is a condition not incompatible for the time being 
with the operation of natural law, in the rapidly chang- 
ing and gradually enlarging circle of human conscious- 
ness. In other words, it has its part to do in the natural 
interchange of matter and motion, which we call evolu- 
tion. All the religions of the world have a like part in 
the great drama whose beginning, design and ending are 
unfathomable to us. 

A study of the history of such civilizations as Greece 
and Rome shows that what we call a high intellectual and 
esthetic civilization was evolved without church or spir- 
itual influences as we understand those terms in the 
Christian religion. The influence with those nations was 
artistic, not Christian. Yet they created a literature and 
a code of laws which are today greatly influencing our 
Christian world. Our classical curriculum in the schools 
is that of these so-called pagan countries. Even science 
today refers to the conception Aristotle seemed to have of 



SUMMARY 255 

evolution. The first expression given of a human soul 
as an entity was not by the Hebrew religion, but by Soc- 
rates, a pagan, 500 years before Christ. The "second 
entelechy" used by Aristotle is now being used by some 
authors as that best expressive of a soul entity. Also 
compare the Christian Empire of Russia with the pagan 
empire of Japan. Compare the civilization of the coun- 
tries most under the influence of the church, with those 
least under its influence, e. g. Italy, Spain, Mexico, with 
the United States, England, France and Germany. The 
latter countries are rising into a more desirable civiliza- 
tion in proportion as they dissolve the bonds of church 
and state. I have heard no expression of disapproval by 
any one of the separation of church and state in France, 
except by the adherents of the pope. It is plain to see 
that the same action is slowly culminating in England. 
This is no argument against real righteousness among 
the people. But it is a protest against organized super- 
natural creeds whose provisions and sanctions are pro- 
tected from discussion by a privileged and powerful 
priesthood. It is a protest against placing around the 
human brain an immovable band of rigid doctrine to 
prevent the freest expansion of the intellect. 

But I repeat, that until men come to comprehend a 
natural cause for every natural effect they should be 
controlled in their attitude toward environment, includ- 
ing their brother men, by some code that will have the 
proper effect, however based that code may be. My 
argument only goes to the extent of showing how much 
better a natural code would be in the development of 
man by imparting to him stronger and more efficient 
manhood. His intellect would be very much less im- 
peded and his morality would necessarily be of a higher 
and broader character than it is now. Of course, this 



256 PHYSICAL BASIS OF MIND AND MORALS 

presupposes that men themselves are adapted to such 
code. History is almost wholly a chronicle of the de- 
lusions that have controlled mankind. These are mon- 
archy, imperialism, militarism, constant warfare, almost 
universal slavery. Can it be that these were merely the 
mobile, automatic expressions of the varying limitations 
of the human intellect? If so, of course, they were 
better for the aggregate welfare than the ill adapted — 
an unfit higher condition of natural law and ethics. Yet 
if the rulers, priests, and teachers all through historical 
time had comprehended and put in use a free democratic 
form of society, or government, in which the natural 
rights of man as now understood in our country were 
enforced under the golden rule, even the ignorant masses 
may have been much more able than they now are to 
govern themselves independent of hereditary rulers and 
supernatural codes. It must be understood that a better 
and more intelligent comprehension of a code and its 
sanction in phenomenism can come only when the ma- 
jority are ready for it intellectually. This change will 
be and should be only gradual, in fact, so imperceptible 
as not to produce a single reaction. This is the way im- 
portant evolutions take place. My theory is that the an- 
cestral line of man has gradually evolved from the lower 
to higher orders; not only in historical time, but in all 
time preceding that; from the formation of the first cell 
to the present heterogeneous organism classified by Cu- 
vier as bimana. There never was a period of that evolu- 
tion when the correspondence between the organism and 
its environment was perfect in a way that would be ideal. 
But very likely it was the best for the organism at the 
time. It was this that maintained the survival of the 
fittest and worked out in a natural way the general 



SUMMARY 257 

rhythmical upward tendency of the line toward the pres- 
ent culmination in complex man. 

Said one who read the chapter on "A Natural Code 
of Ethics," "I cannot see that altruism is accounted for 
by evolution." Altruism, or selfsaerifice, is evidently a 
law of nature. From the theoretical atom to the most 
heterogeneous organism, viz. : man, the sacrifice of the 
individual for the welfare of the race, or the process of 
life and death, is perfectly apparent. No mere form is 
enduring. There is a constant change of form and this 
is called by us death. This is self-sacrifice, or in the 
human being it is altruism. While it may in some in- 
stances seem to be the act of free will yet when analyzed 
it will be found to be the working of the natural law of 
natural selection, or a natural impulse to obtain an 
imaginary reward or to avoid a so called mental anguish 
which would be a worse punishment than the act of al- 
truism. All martyrdom for principle when consciously 
done was actuated by the hope of greater reward, or to 
avoid the obloquy and remorse certain to follow a base 
retraction. 

Another criticism of a natural code of ethics is that 
it appears to one who has felt only the force of the dec- 
alogue and the Christian doctrines backed by the organ- 
ized churches as the declared demands of the Hebrew 
God, that the natural code sanctioned only by the per- 
ception of the individual as the best for his welfare, will 
lack proper force to compel obedience. The natural 
force in a natural code is the unalterable character 
of natural law. When a man becomes intelligent 
enough to perceive that his bodily health depends on 
the observance of sanitary laws known to him, he 
certainly obeys those laws for self-preservation 
and does not seek further sanction for them. So it 



258 PHYSICAL BASIS OF MIND AND MORALS 

will be with physiological and psychical laws — social and 
ethical. Before he can obey them he must comprehend 
their purport. Every violation brings sure punishment. 
He will thus soon learn by actual experience of the pun- 
ishment that his welfare, and especially that of his race, 
depends upon his obeying. This reciprocal action of the 
necessity of the law and his comprehension of its adap- 
tion to his life and welfare, will work out an individual 
intellectual development far more rapid and complete 
than any mere acts of faith can ever do. This is really 
the operation of the principle of natural selection. This 
is not the case now. For theological codes teach that 
the punishments and rewards are not experienced in 
most instances in this world but will be completed in the 
next. Hence so many lapses from the straight and nar- 
row path. The putting off the punishment to an in- 
definite and uncertain time, weakens the character. In 
other words, man, under a natural code of ethics, will 
have the positive force of cosmic energy, or the persist- 
ence of force or natural selection, to hold him in a true 
line of action, instead of the vague threats of an un- 
knowable supernatural power, as now. 

Man has taken himself too seriously. He has meas- 
ured up the universe and his God by his own personality. 
His muscular power has led him to conceive all power as 
personal. The mobility of his nerve structure in produc- 
ing a condition called consciousness has deluded him 
into the idea that all energy must be a conscious per- 
sonality. His really limited intelligence has induced 
him to make that the type and criterion of the so called 
power behind phenomena. 

It is, however, more probable that man being an evo- 
lution fills a certain passing phase of phenomena and is 
really but a very insignificant part of that universe which 



SUMMARY 259 

at first he thought was created for him alone. The latter 
thought is theology. Now science is gradually changing 
this hallucination into a saner perception of man's true 
place in Nature. When he perceives that he is a part of 
phenomena and a rather insignificant one he will only 
then begin to shape his ideas and conduct upon a true 
basis. His thoughts, his character, his actions, his atti- 
tude toward his fellow man, his civilization will be com- 
pletely metamorphosed. Old things will surely then pass 
away and all things will become far saner and more per- 
manent. 

I anticipate the stereotyped criticism that man is not 
comforted by the propositions of philosophy and science. 
This is the same as saying that it is more comfortable 
to let the brain rest satisfied with ignorance and to be 
content with the plain understandable propositions of 
theology. Reasoning from the known to the unknown 
is work for the brain. If we would be in correspond- 
ence with any more than a surface environment, it is 
necessary to penetrate beneath appearances. As above 
stated "To see," is the highest science. But thus to see 
requires work and self-denial; the brain must be kept 
active, not with undisputed things, but with unknown 
things that can be made known only by the exercise of 
close attention and the exclusion from attention of those 
ordinary pleasures and commercial pursuits now so com- 
forting to average man. Life is not a comfort, but a 
continual readjustment. Problems are ever before us to 
be solved. There is no progress in comfort nor in con- 
tentment. Evolution means a struggle for existence. 
In human affairs the higher and purer is attained only 
after a hard fight with the lower and unfit. Religious 
and civil liberty come only by hard struggle with dog- 
matism and oppression. It seems at times far off and 



280 PHYSICAL BASIS OF MIND AND MORALS 

unattainable. But the light at the farthest distance 
never entirely goes out. If we close our eyes and refuse 
to again open them we may feel comfortable and con- 
tent, but to such the light has surely been extinguished. 



THE END. 



INDEX 



Page 

Astronomical Bodies, formed of same elements 16 

Anatomy of Human Body and Anthropoid Apes, practi- 
cally same 24 

Anaesthetics, inhibit brain function in inverse order of 

acquirement 25 

Australia, Fauna of 28 

Abbott, Lyman, — an Evolutionist 73 

Angell, J. R. — Quotations from his "Psychology". 126 et seq. 

Anglo-Saxon, Brain very responsive 138 

Agnosticism — Result of brain limitation 165 

"Anglo-Saxon Superiority" 168, 174 

Arabians unadapted to Christian Beliefs 175 

Altruism, Defined 257 

Beetles, in Island of Madeira 49 

Buckle, on Basis of Civilization 168 

Bible — the Literature of Spirit of the People 227 

Buddha, The — OnJy real thing to I r as^es of Japan.... 227 
Beliefs — Evolved from intellectual conditions 230, 249 

Organized, should not be suddenly upset 230 

Consciousness Defined 6, 80, 148, 150, 154, 164 

Conservation of Energy 14, 145 

Concordance of Planetary Motion 17 

Cell — Defined ' 19, 20 

Classification — Of Linnaeus and Cuvier 21 

Man's Ill, 112 

All proofs of Evolution 22 

Condensation — The Principle of Matter 100 

It permeates social life 103 

Cognition — A Process of Orientation 129 

Operation of entire psychical device 139 

Colored and White Children — Compared 133 

Comparative Psychology 160 

Civilization — Its true basis 168 et seq. 

Defined 197 

Character of present 209 et seq. 

Future evolution of 213 

China and Confucius — Their religion 171 

Chester, Rev. Wm. — His book, "Immortality a Rational 
Faith" 180 

361 



J62 INDEX 

Church, The — An evolution of the spirit of the people. 227 
Correspondence of subject and objec illustrated ..234 et seq. 

Darwin, Charles R. — Theory of Malthus 31 

Sketch of 45 et seq. 

Theory and Genius 53 

Classification of Man 110 

On the Evidences of Geology 26 

On design 59 

Honors to him 66 

Delusions — Of Mankind . . , 115 

Not confined to ignorant 115 

Dreams — Defined 152 et seq. 

Death — Defined 190 

Design — Discussed 234 

Evolution — Defined 12-43 

Subversive of the Supernatural 222 

Energy — Defined 14, 15 

Elements — Few in Earth's Crust 16 

Embryology — Evidence in, to Evolution 20 

Earth — Motions of 92 

Smallness of 112 

Ether — A scientific theory 102 

Education — Defined 132 

Ego, The Phenomenal 144 

Des Cartes, "A spiritual entity" 146 

Each has its own environment 147 

Ethics — A Natural Code of 186 

Not a necessary adjunct of supernaturalism 188 

Based on man's relation to objectivity 188 

Spencer's definition of 188 

Not confined to man 195 

Education — Along scientific lines 231, 232 

Form, alone changes 5 

"Fittest" — Defined 65 

Fiske, John — A disciple of Spencer 72 et seq. 

Faraday, Michael — On matter 106 

Faith — Defined 120 

Discussed .••••: • 180 

Fiction — Always modification of real 224 

Free Agency — Discussed 233 et seq. 

Freedom of opinion not encouraged 235 et seq. 

Geographical distribution 28 

Gallepagos Islands — The Fauna of 29 

God — The Idea of 60 

Glacial Epoch — Periodical 92 

Geocentric Idea — ■ Theological and Natural 170 

Golden Rule — Founded on necessity 173 

Horse — and his progenitors 27 

Homogeneity — Defined 32 

Heterogeneity — Defined 32 



INDEX 263 

Huxley — on natural selection 49 

Historical Beliefs , 76 

Human Knowledge — Its limitations 110 

Defined 122 et seq. 

Hart, Sir Robert — On Character of the Chinese.. 171 et seq. 

Hallucination — How produced 251 et seq. 

Inorganic Evolution 13 

Insanity — Lesion of the Brain 25 

Inheritance — Long culture effecting 37 

Idea — Spencer's definition of 40, 130, 162 

Indestructibility of Matter 145 

Introspection — Defined 157 

Immortality — Natural, not Supernatural 190 

Jordan, President — Quoted , 115 

Kellar, Helen — Her mentality 131 et seq. 

Knowledge — Definition, same as life 139 

Life Forms — followed inorganic evolution 19 

Universal 105 et seq. 

Evolved from inorganic 44 

Le Conte, Professor — On Missing Links . 27 

On molecular motion .. 152 

Lincoln, Abraham 45 

Life — A natural evolution 107 

Limitation of Cognition 122 

Loeb, Jacques — On similarity of function in muscle and 

nerve 149 

"Limitations and Impediments" 215 

Language — Evolved from prevalent conceptions 245 

Moment of Momentum 14 

Multiplicity of Effects 15 

Man, a family of the order of Mammalia 21 

Morphology — Its evidence of evolution 23 

Missing Links . 27 

Method of Evolution 29 

Metaphysics of Science 31 

Malthus — Theory of 31 

Memory — Defined 36 

An added sense 253 

Mind — The aggregation of feelings 38, 107 

Co-extensive with life 124 

Not confined to man 123 et seq. 

Develops only with experiences 129 

Man — Still evolving socially and mentally 39 

A psycho-physical organism 147 

A part of phenomena 147 

The evolutionist's view of him 193 

His intelligence, a correspondence with environment.. 86 

His mentality shown in all external peculiarities 128 

Weakest of animals, physically 195 

Kin to all things 204 



264 INDEX 

His power derived from around and below, not above 
him 205 

His mental superiority , 209 et seq. 

Causes of his superiortv 211 et seq. 

Does not control natural forces 217 et seq. 

Mackintosh, Robert — Misconception of natural selec- 
tion , . 62 

Molecular motion — In nerve tissue 76 et seq. and 125 

Monism — In phenomena 82, 88, 104, 117, and 145 

McPherson, Logan C. — A disciple of Spencer 84 

Mivart, St. George — Quoted 103 

Trouble with Church r 228 

Morgan, C. Lloyd — On Vitalism 118 et seq. 

On the Ego 148 

Masses of Matter — Resistances 144 

M tiller, Max — On the mental process 151 

"Mental' and "Moral" — Defined 167 

Nebular Theory 13, 98 et seq. 

Neptune — The planet 18 

Natural Selection 30 

Its importance 50 et seq. 

Defined 34, 54 

In physical life 34 

In social life 186 et seq. 

Nervous system — How evolved 48 

Of what composed 149 

Natural Ethics — As viewe by August Comte and 

others 74 

Noumenon — Unknowable 118 

Newton, Sir Isaac — His superior brain 137 et seq. 

Nations — Their rise and fall a rhythm 169 

Naturalism vs. Supernaturalism 177 et seq. 

New England — Its evolution of free thought 198 

Organic evolution 19 

Origin of life forms 19, 217 

Organisms — Their development from a cell 20 

No two alike 136 

"Origin of Species," Darwin's — Its review in the London 

Times 55 

Its effect on theology 56, 117 

Organic substance — Its differentiation 102 

Origin, of matter or life insoluble 216 

Phenomena — Defined 5 

Result of evolution 40 

Phenomenism — ■" Defined 6 

The essence of • . . 167 

Perception — A condition 7 

The product of three images 253 

Psychical Phenomena 7, 151 



INDEX 26D 

Processes of in cerebrum, not conscious to 

man 7, 8, 141 et seq. 

Evidences of nebular theory 17 

Defined 128, 130 et seq., 134 

Photography — Importance in Astronomy 13 

Persistence of Force 15, 119, 145 

Paleontology 26 

Progress — Defined 221 

Rudimentary organs 23 

Romanes — Quoted 26 

Reason — A synthesis of images 36 

Arrested molecular motion 38 

Equal to an added sense 253 

Rhythm of Motion 91 

On our planet 92 

In social affairs 96 

In psychical phenomena 96 

Fundamental and universal 98, 108 

Reflex action — Defined 163 

Religion — The result of civilization 173 et seq. 

The psychology of it 242 

Reformation of Luther 199 

Reading — The psychology of it 245 et seq. 

Substance — Its immortality 5 

Sense organs — The avenues of cognition 6, 114 

All reducible to touch 149 

Simple elements — Few in number 15, 16 

Spectrum Analysis — Its significance 16, 17 

Senility — Its psychical peculiarities 24 

Spencer, Herbert, and his mistaken disciples 72 

Agnostic and materialist 70 

His "First Principles," '. 71 

The breadth of his teaching 84 

What Darwin says of him 88 

His "Synthetic Philosophy," 89 

Soul — - Defined . . 105, 107, 112 

Scientific Method — Defined 120 

Structure — Its development simultaneous with that of 

function 133 

Shakespeare — His high brain structure 137 

Space — Defined 144 

Self — Defined 152, 248 

Sleep — ■ Defined 152 

Self Consciousness — Defined 155 

Sherrington, C. S. — On the brain structure of 

man 155 et seq. 

Supernaturalism — Its historical validity 181 

Foe of progress in science 196 et seq. 

Society — Its evolution 195 

Shaler, N. S. — Quoted 202 et seq. 207 et seq. 



266 INDEX 

Superstition — Its blighting effect 222 et seq. 

"Summary," 238 

Thought — Based on self and race preservation 41, 161 

Result of molecular motion 107, 159, 243 

Its physical marks 158 

Time — Defined 109 

Touch — Defined 154 

Its psychology 160 

Uranus — Non-concordance of its satellites . . . . 18 

Unknowable Absolute 73 et seq. 186 

United States — The apotheosis of individual struggle 

against tyranny 176 

Tolerant, of independent belief 199 

Vestigial structures — In human body 23 

Variability — Cause of 52 

Wundt, Wm. — Quoted 9, 77 et seq. 

Wallace, Alfred R. — Method of Evolution 30 

Conditions in primitive life 194 

Weissman — Selective process 34, 118, 135 

Ward, James — On Herbert Spencer 72 

Will — Determined by organization 131 

White and Colored children 133 

White, Andrew D. — His book, "The Warfare of Science 

and Theology/' 236 

Youmans, E. L. — Friend of. Spencer 72 

Yellowstone National Park 94 



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